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Forum Home  →  Discussion  →  Covid-19 issues  →  Thread

Further thoughts on self-isolating, shielding and the Work Allowance. 

Ruth Knox
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We’ve already looked at UC Schedule 8, paragraph 3, which seems to me to allow Limited Capability for Work for those self-isolating and therefore the Work Allowance for at least one Assessment Period.  But what about paragraph 4 for those shielding?  Paragraph 4, which we use all the time states:

4.—(1) The claimant is suffering from a specific illness, disease or disablement by reason of which there would be a substantial risk to the physical or mental health of any person were the claimant found not to have limited capability for work.

Surely people of working age who are shielding are doing so because they are suffering from a specific illness, disease or disablement by reason of which there would be a substantial risk to the physical or mental health of any person (i.e. themselves) were they to be found capable of work?
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So shouldn’t they too be considered as having limited capability for work and be able to access the Work Allowance from Day 1?

Ianb
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I think the difficulty with that is that the risk depends on the nature of the work. There are many people shielding who can continue to work because they can safely do so from home. The risk only arises if they need to leave their home in order to work.

Va1der
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But that also applies to many other illnesses covered by this regulation. Under normal circumstances, someone with severely reduced immune systems, for example.

nevip
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In CE/0534/2015 Judge Jacobs, in considering home working regarding regulations 29 and 35 said, at para’ 12:

“As far as I recall, the issue of travel to work had never arisen as a separate issue in dispute before Charlton. I would not attribute to paragraph 34 in that case an absolute prohibition on taking home working into account. It is possible that the only type of work for which the claimant is suitable might be in an industry where home working is possible, even encouraged. That may be rare, but I do not read what the Court said as excluding that possibility. As I have said, home working was not an issue before the Court. What it said in paragraph 34 followed from the way that its decision on the issue in dispute would apply in the overwhelming majority of cases. But the Court was not called upon to be prescriptive that home working could not be considered if appropriate.”

http://administrativeappeals.decisions.tribunals.gov.uk/Aspx/view.aspx?id=4588

 

Elliot Kent
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Isn’t this kind of moot because reg 39(7) precludes a finding that a claimant meets para 4 Sch 8 until after it has been determined that they fail the WCA?

Incidentally - does anyone know why the consolidated version of the UC Regs has disappeared from legislation.gov
https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2013/376/contents

[ Edited: 3 Jun 2020 at 03:06 pm by Elliot Kent ]
Gareth Morgan
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Elliot Kent - 03 June 2020 02:57 PM

Incidentally - does anyone know why the consolidated version of the UC Regs has disappeared from legislation.gov
https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2013/376/contents

My fault I’m afraid. I pointed out some errors in them.

“The image in reg. 54A has now been corrected: http://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2013/376/regulation/54A

The PDFs you mention were produced by our colleagues in the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) and were published on legislation.gov.uk as a stop gap until the full online revised version above was made available. Over the past few years we have worked with a team of editors, from DWP based in Leeds, to add revised DWP S.I.s and a selection of Acts relating to DWP onto legislation.gov.uk and to get them to the point where they could maintain that legislation using our editorial system. Historically DWP had maintained a set of revised S.I.s and Acts separately to us on a now redundant system and we have been through a lengthy process to convert all those S.I.s and Acts into XML so that they can be published in an accessible format on legislation.gov.uk.  Due to the length of time it has taken to convert their dataset we published their revised PDFs on legislation.gov.uk to bridge the gap.

DWP only have limited access to their old editorial tool and are unable to correct the image in the PDFs you were viewing.  We have therefore removed the revised PDFs from the site to avoid confusion.  If you still require a PDF you can generate on-the-fly PDFs of any version (original, latest or at any point in time) of the Act using the ‘Print Options’ menu and selecting the ‘PDF’ option.  For example, here is a PDF of the latest version of the whole Act generated today: http://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2013/376/data.pdf.

I hope that helps to explain what you were seeing and provides you with the revised version you need.”

Charles
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Elliot Kent - 03 June 2020 02:57 PM

Incidentally - does anyone know why the consolidated version of the UC Regs has disappeared from legislation.gov
https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2013/376/contents

I’ve seen this with other regs before, where they’ve taken it down due to finding an error. It can be annoying because that simply leaves you with nothing! In this case however, legislation.gov.uk’s own version is already more updated than the most recent DWP version anyway, so no major loss there.
If you really want the DWP version, the most recent one I could find on the Wayback Machine is the May 2018 version here.

[ Edited: 3 Jun 2020 at 05:07 pm by Charles ]
Elliot Kent
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Thanks Gareth, I’m not sure I was actually expecting a thorough explanation of exactly why this had happened and who was to blame!

I have attached the most recent version I have of the regs (31/03/19) in case it assists (complete with notation goof at reg 54A)

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Ruth Knox
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Just had a look at regulation 39(7) and it is very straightforward. No room for manoeuvre there. So that disposes of that idea! Thanks Elliot.