Overpayment of Income Support through failure to renew child benefit in extension period

Slightly out of usual run of my disability related benefits, so any help humbly and gratefully received (tribunal in 2 weeks, but client only comes in today!).

Client looks after disabled teenage son but fails to renew child benefit despite his continuing in full-time ed. JCP pick up on CB not being paid (after 5 months) and disallow IS, plus substantial overpayment recovery demand (£1,448).  The IS claim still included the old personal allowances/premiums as never floated onto CTC. 

First and quick look at DWP sub suggests there may be loopholes, as mother was still looking after son (also getting CA). Is there any case law on this, or is receipt of CB the only passport to the extra child related personal allowance/premiums?

Hi - I’m a bit confused as to what has happened here. First of all, if the young person has stayed in full-time non-advanced education, that’s not the extension period (the extension period is 20 weeks after leaving full-time ed). So what I think you are saying is that CB stopped when it should not have done, and that this caused IS to stop completely (not just the child allowances/premiums but the whole award?).

It would be useful to know more about how CB stopped. Was the claimant asked whether his son was staying in education? You say he ‘failed to renew’ but this doesn’t make sense in the context of CB.

Secondly, I’m unclear about the IS claim. Presumably it must be IS on the basis of being a carer. Who was the claimant (your client or his wife)? If CA is still in payment, and DLA still in payment (to the son), why has IS stopped? Is it because there is no IS payable UNLESS the child allowances/premiums are included?

In any case, it sounds as though you need to look at the old version of the IS regs so that you can check the conditions for child personal allowances and family premium before the regs were changed due to child tax credit. I’m afraid I don’t have these to hand, but somebody probably will.

Just to clarify Rhadwen.

Young person continued in F/T, so mother should have still been entitled to claim CB, but crucially failed to renew (seem to remember HMRC send out a form each year post 16?).  We don’t know why she dropped the CB claim, but she states that the son still continued in f/t education.

Although she was in receipt of IS as a carer, she was also being paid the child personal allowance/premiums (for the son in further education) , as she was never floated onto CTC. It is the child related personal allowance/premiums which are the subject of the overpayment.  Sorry, If I didn’t make this clear.

Steve

Reg 15 of the Income Support Regs is the one governing entitlement for a young person - where there is no existing claim for child benefit then entitlement goes with ‘the person with whom the ..... young person lives’.  [reg 15(2)(a)]

Is there something further to this or have they just not considered this regulation properly?

Tony

That’s what I was hoping for Tony!

I think it is a sloppy bit of JCP work.  Yesterday I asked the client to check with HMRC what had happended at their end. Amazingly HMRC agree that there was an error on their part and will be contacting JCP to inform them (and paying up too).  Asking for postponement of tribunal while the paperwork comes in. Expecting JCP to withdraw now.

Looks like it’s all moving in the right direction.

Tony

Bit too easy….won’t count my chickens yet!

OK - so it looks as if maybe the mother didn’t fail to tell HMRC about the full-time education after all? If it was their error things are looking up. Although I agree with Tony that what really matters in the context of the child allowances and premiums is the wording of the IS regs.

PS, as well as reg 15, I think you should have a look at reg 14 which defines who is a ‘young person’ for the purposes of IS - this ultimately leads you to the CB regulations (via SSCBA). In short I think it means that to be a ‘young person’ for IS purposes only requires the young person to be in full-time non-advanced education, not for CB to be in payment.

Then what’s at issue is that the DWP did not know the young person was in full-time education, because no CB was being paid and they weren’t informed in any other way? Let’s hope this is corrected by HMRC making retrospective payment of CB.

Thanks Rhadwen, I thought there was more to it than JCP were pretending. Would be a strage situation where someone failed to claim a benefit and then was effictively ‘fined’ .

I can see why it might look that way from the client’s point of view. But the DWP can’t infer a fact that they haven’t been told, have no evidence for etc, namely that the son was in education.

Hopefully it will all be sorted out by the evidence of a retrospective payment of CB though. Do post back if it does go to tribunal.

The charity I work for is trying to get money for a transition project to help when disabled children reach 16, for just this kind of problem. If we get funding, I’ll try to get it on the news section of Rightsnet.

That’s interesting Rhadwen.

We are invloved in a project with the local children’s disability team/Connexions/FE College for similar transition reasons.  Aim is to produce a simple information sheet highlighting benefit issues when F/T education finishes and the impact on benefits (+ young person’s ESA claim), etc. This is to be followed by workshops in New Year for parent/carers, taking place at our two main schools where children with disabilities go, to get across the key messages, plus one-to-one appointments with ourselves, if reqd.

Nice thing about this project is that every relevant child is on a list (home educated/out-of-area, private, etc), so veryone gets an invitation.

Separately, to this we have also worked with HB dept at council to hit every household on HB with child DLA claim in payment, with a letter reminding them to claim additional CTC elements, as we keep coming across this problem of parents not notifying CTC about child DLA awards. Also alerted them to local carers register - although very little feedback on the letters, because they were just told to contact CTC.

Stevegale - proposed leaflet sounds great and yes, message re CTC really needs to get out there.  Would it be ok to pass the information about what you are doing to my colleague Janet Mearns? She runs the network Waving not Drowning (for parents of disabled children). She might be able to put something in the newsletter if you thought that would be appropriate (it is national, but we do feature articles about local intiatives).

Yes, that’s fine Rhadwen….not much developed yet re. leaflet (will be in Autumn). We receive ‘Waving Not Drowning’, so happy for anything to go in.