Closing a claim

Client, as a result of huge health issues involving his children, is late providing information to UC about self-employment income and expenses. UC warn him via his journal that if he doesn’t provide the information by 2/1/24 his claim will be closed. A week later his claim is closed anyway.

Client makes a fresh claim, but this means that his first payment won’t be for quite some time, so he is missing out on his December UC payment.

We help him ask for MR on the basis that DWP conduct was unreasonable and also that there is no regulatory provision for his claim to be closed until benefit has been suspended and a month has passed. The MP also gets involved.

Possibly a coincidence, but the very swift response from the DWP has been to backdate his new claim by one month. Don’t really know what this even means, as his new claim will now have started before his old claim ended, and in any event the client still has the major hassle of attending new appointments, providing documentation etc.

When he made his new UC claim and declared self employment, this would have generated a Gateway interview on the UC Buiild. It would have also generated ” a payment blocker ”  on the Build which remains intact until the interview has been attended or the Work Coach has removed the Self Employment To Do from the Build. So it would be worthwhile to keep an eye on his UC commitments and journal.