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UC claim: pensioner claimed in error
Apologies if this is a really basic question (in a bit of a hurry) but a 69 year old client was incorrectly advised to claim UC in order to get housing benefit. He should have been told to claim HB/CTS. Is he locked in to the UC system now or can he close the claim and claim HB/CTS.
Many thanks
We’ve had a few of these come through to us. Legally, he cannot claim UC. Section 4 of the Welfare Reform Act 2012 couldn’t be clearer on that:
4 Basic conditions
(1)For the purposes of section 3, a person meets the basic conditions who—
(a)is at least 18 years old,
(b)has not reached the qualifying age for state pension credit,
We’ve advised our advisers to proceed as follows and haven’t heard about subsequent problems so hopefully the same will work out for your client. First of all, advise him to wait until the end of his next assessment period and recieve his next payment, then submit a journal entry stating that he wishes to withdraw his UC claim and can they close it.
Then, he’s free to make HB/CTS claims as normal. As all overpayments of UC are recoverable regardless of who is at fault, simply stating that he wishes to stop his UC claim and nothing more has avoided any recovery action that we’re aware of. Good luck.
That’s great, thanks. As it has turned out, our adviser just accessed the client’s journal and UC was declined this morning due to client’s age.
Thanks for your help.
[ Edited: 4 Jul 2018 at 02:01 pm by DebbieS ]That’s great, thanks. As it has turned out, our adviser just accessed the client’s journal and UC was declined this morning due to client’s age.
Thanks for your help.
That’s reassuring they got this one right at least. We had one case where UC was being paid and they were taking Pension Credit into account as income…..