CALL FOR CLIENTS - Refugee Child Tax Credit refusal

CPAG have obtained funding to develop a judicial review challenge to HMRC’s refusal to award child tax credit for the period between a refugee’s claim for and award of refugee status, where that claim is made within one month of notification of status.

We are looking for new clients to take the case further. If successful, HMRC will have to revisit all decisions where they have refused claimed by eligible refugees. To give us the best chance of success we are looking for new clients with very recent and clear cut cases.

Please therefore let us know if you are contacted by anyone who:

·      Claimed asylum before the roll out of UC was completed (Dec 2018).

·      Has been granted refugee status recently (ideally within the last month)

·      Phoned the tax credit help line and said ‘please treat this phone call as a claim’ well within one month of the grant of their status.

·      Ideally (but not essentially) posted a claim form on the same day, so it is received by HMRC within the month, with a covering letter stating ‘further to my claim made by telephone today when I spoke to eg. ‘Barry at 10.32am in the HMRC Tax Credit Helpline’ ‘please find enclosed a completed tax credit application form containing all the information HMRC need to process my claim for Child Tax Credit’.

We would like such clients to be referred to CPAG immediately (a written response from HMRC need not have been received). CPAG will then take them on under Legal Help and send a judicial review pre-action letter challenging the telephone decision with the intention of issuing judicial review proceedings.

The time scale is important because there is a ‘promptly and within 3 months’ time limit to complete the judicial review pre-action stage. This means as quickly as possible and no more than 3 months from the date of the decision (ie. the phone call), during which we must send a pre-action letter and give HMRC 14 days to respond.

If you become aware of any new clients, please help them make the phone call, record, time, date, who you spoke to, state ‘please treat this phone call as a claim’, send a claim form if you can with covering letter There is an old one on the CPAG website here: https://cpag.org.uk/welfare-rights/judicial-review/judicial-review-pre-action-letters/tax-credits, and then immediately get in touch with CPAG at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).

Please share this request where you can. Thanks in advance.

Is there a challenge to the lack of any provision for backdating in this way in UC?

Apologies for the late response, no there is not. Since a challenge to removal of backdating for IS was unsuccessful, we do not think this would have a good prospect of success, see Blakesley v SSWP (http://administrativeappeals.decisions.tribunals.gov.uk/Aspx/view.aspx?id=3946)

Whereas, we have different grounds for CTC.

We have also prepared templates for advisers to use to protect their clients’ positions pending the JR challenge as follows:

MR request
Req to FtF to admit appeal without MRN
FtT submission

Please get in touch if these would be of use. .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address). They will be on the judicial review pages of the CPAG website in due course.