SPC awarded causing a MASSIVE HB overpayment

hi guys

so question

i completed a PC claim for a tenant on 28th March 2022 - we chased this up constantly during the year - however she has now received a letter dated 7th January 2023 stating she is entitled to 72p of SPC as at the time of the appln she had over £16k in savings however this dropped in April 2022 after she paid for her husbands funeral.

HB completed their own calculation and awarded her HB from 28th march but now since the award of SPC she has now been hit with a massive overpayment saying she wasnt eligible for any HB - ive done a calculation and she is entitled to this but i assume that because PC have done a calculation and provided this to HB that they will use these figures despite the fact that she has provided bank statements for the last year to the council showing her savings were below £16k.

I rang PC and explained that her savings have dropped but was told that they could only do it from today as we were only notifying them from today - i did mention the claim was from March last year and that they have only just awarded this but was polite told that it wasnt their fault

Ive done a letter to HB to basically say look you can actually make a decision in your own right if you have evidence to confirm that her savings are of a certain level

would it also be worth sending in a letter to pension service saying that due to the length of time it has taken to assess her PC claim that her savings have dropped and provided her bank statements as well?

the only reason we put the claim in for pc was for the COL payments as 74p weekly SPC isnt going to send her off to an island with endless drinks being brought to her

any advice would be champion :)

Few things.

First, is this savings or guarantee PC? If it is guarantee pension credit, then its a passport to full HB so any capital issues would be ignored. This is often one of the reasons to claim even 72p per week. The same isn’t true of savings credit, but that is comparatively rare.

Second, your client certainly can sort out the capital issues with PC now. They can ask for mandatory reconsideration i.e. any grounds revision of the awarding decision. As the challenge is on “any grounds” that can include the DM’s failure to take account of the reduction in capital prior to the awarding decision despite not being aware of it.

Third, I am not really sure I understand why you are saying that the PC award has caused the HB overpayment - the overpayment seems to be the result of your client not telling HB about her capital. However, in any case, there is surely only an overpayment to the extent that your client’s capital actually exceeded the upper or lower limits at any given time.

These things of course are not resolved by ‘writing letters’ to PC and HB or by ringing up the helpline and being given incorrect advice. She needs to ask for MR of the PC decision and appeal the HB decision.

Elliot Kent - 22 February 2023 07:55 AM

Few things.

First, is this savings or guarantee PC? If it is guarantee pension credit, then its a passport to full HB so any capital issues would be ignored. This is often one of the reasons to claim even 72p per week. The same isn’t true of savings credit, but that is comparatively rare.

Second, your client certainly can sort out the capital issues with PC now. They can ask for mandatory reconsideration i.e. any grounds revision of the awarding decision. As the challenge is on “any grounds” that can include the DM’s failure to take account of the reduction in capital prior to the awarding decision despite not being aware of it.

Third, I am not really sure I understand why you are saying that the PC award has caused the HB overpayment - the overpayment seems to be the result of your client not telling HB about her capital. However, in any case, there is surely only an overpayment to the extent that your client’s capital actually exceeded the upper or lower limits at any given time.

These things of course are not resolved by ‘writing letters’ to PC and HB or by ringing up the helpline and being given incorrect advice. She needs to ask for MR of the PC decision and appeal the HB decision.

sorry didnt realise that SPC does translate to savings pension credit to everyone its definitely savings pension credit

the overpayment from HB is due to the pension credit it states in the letter that an ATLAS notification of a new benefit - i did the original HB claim stating the amount of savings and provided them with bank statements saying as such so they were aware of the savings hence why it was originally awarded and now they are saying theres an overpayment because of the PC

my ‘writing letters’ was going to be an MR/appeal which is what the letter is to HB is the appeal request but ill send a letter to PC requesting the MR along with the bank statements

If this is Pension Credit Savings Credit that your client is entitled to, then the rules for HB assessments work in a different way than where PC Guarantee Credit is in payment.

They can only claim standard HB and the LA use the assessed income figure provided by the Pension Service to assess entitlement to HB. Importantly however, the normal capital rules would apply so if your client had over £16,000 in capital, they would not be entitled to HB at that point.

This raises the question of how exactly was HB entitlement originally calculated when it appears that (1) your client was not entitled to PCGC which would passport as Elliot says and (2) they had capital in excess of the upper threshold?

I don’t really follow what you’re saying where you say they were told about the capital but they awarded HB anyway - why did they do that? Have they made an error in the original award of HB? Did they assume entitlement to PCGC?