Terminal illness and claimant commitments

Hi

I’ve looked at reg 16 and reg 39 of the UC regs and am frankly dumbfounded that there’s no explicit exemption for terminally ill people to enter into a CC.

Am I missing something?

I’m not sure if there is a specific exemption, but a terminally ill client should be automatically placed in the LCWRA group with no WCA assessment under UC Regs Reg 40(1)(b) and Schedule 9 para 1. Guidance on this in ADM Chapter G3(para G3005).

Also UC Regs Reg 99 ‘Circumstances in which [work related] requirements must not be imposed’ should prevent a terminally ill client from being asked to meet any work related requirements say, if they cannot get DS1500 to UC quick enough when a claim is done.

Everyone needs to sign a claimant commitment, whether or not subject to conditionality, unless an exception applies. The exception in reg 16(b) is that a claimant does not need to sign a commitment in “exceptional circumstances”. ADM J1026 tells us that terminal illness is likely to be one of those “exceptional circumstances”.