Pro 517 letter

I am pleased to say that I have just won the case that caused my original post.

ESA have conceded that they a had no record of a Pro 517 letter had been sent to the claimant . The Pro 517 letter is described as a notification that someone was being paid CA so there are clearly some safeguards in place now that the ‘cared for’ person doesn’t have to sign the DS700.
(There was however no mention of this in the original letters that were sent to the cl, the DWP never sent a formal response despite many attempts and I can’t find any link to the Pro 517 either).

The lack of this letter may possibly be useful defence against overpayments where the ‘cared for’ person doesn’t realise that the ‘carer ’ has made a CA claim.

Thanks Pete, this is useful. It’s something I’ve been wondering about for a while.

For what its worth I had a recent case where the DWP had a record of the Pro 517 letter being issued but had no record of when the document was sent to my client.

They included a sample copy in the bundle and argued that

“...especially in the light of the Pro 517 for being isssued to Miss….on ......(see page 8 of the overpayment appeal bundle), it was entirely resonable for Miss ..... to expect that the award of Carers Allowance to her carere may affect her own entitlement to the SDP.  The wording of the Pro517 (see page 42 of the overpayment appeal bundle) clearly states that Miss .... may no longer qualify for the SDP now that CA has been awarded to her carer and to contact the ESA office for more information in this regard.”

The DWP’s argument was that the Pro517 effectively instructed my client to “contact the ESA office” to notify the change of circumstances.

I argued that   my client could not possibly obtain “more information” if the office dealing with ESA did not have the relevant information, in other words that a claim for carers allowance had been made and that my client was the person receiving care.

I argued that Hinchy could be distinguished and that my client could rely on R(A)2/06 and R(SB)15/87 as authority for the propostion that there can be no failure to disclose on a claimant’s part if the Respondent’s own representations could reasonably have led her to believe that the relevant office already knew of that fact.

The Tribunal accepted my argument