Housing benefit and universal credit sanction

Hello

A young person I am working with made me aware on 26/06/22 that he received a letter from housing benefit that claim had stopped on 14/03/22 and an overpayment of housing benefit would be clawed back. This is now being clawed back from current HB payments each week. We made a new claim for housing benefit and this now back in payment. I sent an email to housing benefit asking to look at the decision to claw back an overpayment (this is £2100) but this was turned down as we did not show enough good cause. The reason as to why the claim stopped was that he was sanctioned and this indicated a change to housing benefit. Housing benefit wrote back asking how did my young person survived and asked for bank statmements. We sent this back to them to the housing officer who was dealing with the claim but he then wrote back in August stating that the claim was turned down and they would still continue with the clawback of the overpayment.

What I am asking: is it correct that a sanction applied to universal credit would indicate to housing benefit a change? Is this being applied correctly?

Id put an appeal in, stating that your client had entitlement to HB as he had below his applicable amount to live on after sanction.
Ask for a late MR, then appeal to tribunal.
as long as you can evidence he had no other income, then hopefully tribunal will see sense

Just to add: no need to go through MR in an HB case, make it an appeal to Tribunal immediately.  LA will still review the case and revise the decision if they can see that it is clearly wrong.

Important technical point here is that the overpayment must be based on an “adverse inference” about the facts, and the claimant can be demonstrate that the inference is incorrect on appeal.  It gives the claimant another bite of the cherry if they originally failed to respond to reasonable enquiries.  This is by way of contrast to suspension and termination, which arguably has a narrower right of appeal but which can only apply prospectively from the date when HB payments stopped.

This is the UC variant of an issue that is old as the hills: claimant no longer entitled to a benefit that “passports” them to full HB, Council asks claimant what’s going on, claimant fails to reply or Council not convinced by reply, Council decides no longer entitled to HB, claimant wakes up and provides the evidence as part of an appeal.  Outcome of appeal:

- in case of suspension and termination, arguably “too bad you overslept” (but that is still a controversial point of law);
- in case of adverse inference, decision based on wrong facts, you are in fact entitled to HB.

One final thing, do make sure the appeal is pitched as being against the entitlement decision and not just the o/p - you want continuous ongoing HB reinstated.

I don’t think a sanction resulting in nil UC can be a change that a claimant is required to report. The UC entitlement remains, even if UC is not in payment due to a sanction. HB Regs 2006 reg 2(3) clarifies this for JSA, and HB Regs 2006 reg 3B appears to clarify this for UC:
(3B) For the purposes of these Regulations, a person (“P”) is on universal credit on any day in respect of which P is entitled to universal credit (whether it is in payment or not).

Curious to know how the nil UC award has appeared to the HB team - our HB team can differentiate between a UC award reduced completely to nil due to being overscale (‘true nil’), and a UC award where for example the claimant received £0 payment but there is some UC is in payment albeit going direct to landlord via a rent APA (‘false nil’). UC reduced to £0 due to a sanction would (I imagine) show as nil UC with a deduction for ‘conditionality sanction’; therefore, the claimant is still entitled to UC.

Oh, and appeal the UC sanction decision too, of course.

As I understand it, the appeal must be made direct to the local authority (Rule 23 Tribunal Regs). It should be an appeal against both decisions: entitlement and overpayment recovery.

Do make the appeal on paper sending it to the local authority by recorded delivery and in the appeal request an acknowledgement in writing.

As it is late, give reasons for lateness and point out that if the local authority does not accept it having been made in time, they must refer it to the tribunal immediately (Rule 23 (7)).

In my experience, an appeal on paper languishes somewhere in the local authority. Send them a reminder after 14 days and then if there is no response, ask the tribunal to issue direction to the local authority to deal with appeal. At this stage, on receiving communication from the tribunal, it may be too hard and difficult to prepare an appeal response and the local authority may revise the decisions.

I hope that this approach does not sound too cynical.