Separated mixed age couple

The facts I have are:

- MAC moves into local authority area from elsewhere, general needs private tenancy
- Older partner is on SPC which began in 2020 (as to how that is possible, I’ll return to that)
- Not on UC and younger partner not on ESA(ir) etc
- I am not aware of any issues that would make the younger partner ineligible for UC.

The Council says it cannot accept a new HB claim because the SPC does not predate May 2019 - again, I’ll return to that. After a short time - within three months - they separate and the working age partner moves out.  Council’s question is: can the pensioner now claim HB as a single person, to commence from the beginning of the tenancy?

I cannot see why not:

- Reg 64(1) of the HB(SPC) Regs provides for the backdating of pensioner HB.  It is drafted as a time-limit within which to claim, it does not treat the date of claim as an earlier date.
- There would perhaps be a problem reading Reg 64 in conjunction with Reg 6A of the UC(TP) Regs 2014 if Reg 64 treated the claim as made on a date up to three months ago - but it doesn’t, the claim is made when it’s made and entitlement begins up to three months earlier
- Reg 64(6)(b) could also be a possible problem if the claim is made within a month of the tenancy start date, so perhaps the claim needs to be made more than a month into a new tenancy
- Article 7 of the No 23 Order had rules about “treated as made” claim dates, but Reg 6A of the UC(TP) Regs does not as far as I can see

If the younger partner had been on ESA(ir) etc, I think it is possibly arguable that the award would terminate under Article 6(2)(b) of the No 31 Order when they separate, if sense can be made of Article 6(2): depends at which stage of the award they need to be a mixed age couple, but certainly an award would migrate from the working age HB Regs to the HB(SPC) Regs in those circumstances.  But I cannot see anything to prevent the newly single pensioner from reclaiming within three months for a seamless continuation - so they could make the two claims together: “here is my HB claim for the period before we split up, and also for the period after we split up if you think Article 6(2)(b) was triggered by the separation”.

Now, what was he doing on Pension Credit?  I can only assume there was a transitionally protected HB award in place from before May 2019, in which case they can rely on the unbroken chain of transitional protection to claim HB at the new address anyway.  But if he had not been on SPC, I think the above analysis means the HB claim is still possible -what do you all think?

By the way, there is ... wait for it ... one week of HB at stake in this case!  They split up in the first week of the tenancy.  The older partner wants to claim it.  Don’t see why not.

Interesting case!

I agree that the award can be backdated to the start of the tenancy as long as the claim is made more than one month after the tenancy started (as you say). On the old Art.7 of the No.23 Commencement Order, even that would have been fine, due to Art.7(8).

If the younger member of the couple had been on ESA(ir) etc, then it’s more complicated, as you’re looking to backdate it to a period covered by the working-age rules. (I think we’ve actually discussed this once before, but I don’t remember where, and what came out of the discussion.)
I think that as an award of HB for a period when they were still a couple would have been under the working-age rules, then they would need the claim to be treated as made earlier, which would be an issue here. You would anyway then have the one month limitation on backdating the claim.

Thank you Charles, I was hoping you would see this one.

I remember those discussions about backdating under the rules in one set of Rregs reaching back into the purview of the other set of Regs, and it made my brain hurt, so thankfully we don’t have to worry about it in this case!