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Forum Home  →  Discussion  →  Universal credit administration  →  Thread

UC and changes in circumstance

AlexJ
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Trafford Welfare Rights

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Total Posts: 178

Joined: 4 July 2016

Good morning folks

Just a quick one (hopefully). I know that in practice, the DWP will expect any changes in circumstances to be notified on the UC journal in writing. However, is does this have a legal basis, or can a change be notified by another means?

Specifically, I have a client who notified her work coach that she was caring for her elderly mother who gets PIP. Her work coach told her that she should go and claim CA; she never did because she (wrongly) believed her mother’s other benefits would be affected (she’d read about the SDP being impacted by CA, but her mother didn’t get it). She didn’t notify this as a change on her journal, but the DWP have shared with us the record of the conversation with the work coach which confirms that this advice was given. 

I’m hoping to argue that the carer’s element should have been added to the UC following this notification, as it seems clear that if the work coach thought she was eligible for CA, she should also be awarded the CE (I think the work coach mistakenly believed that you have to get CA to get the CE - seems like quite a widespread misconception). But I just wanted to check whether there is any duty to notify changes in writing. CPAG (p. 1300 and 1308) suggests that it isn’t mandatory to notify a change in writing for benefits other than HB.

Many thanks in advance for any thoughts or comments,

Alex

Elliot Kent
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Shelter

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Total Posts: 3117

Joined: 14 July 2014

The DWP computer has great difficulty in processing changes when they are not input using the ‘change of circumstances’ tab on the journal, but you are right that there is no specific requirement for changes to be reported in this way.

In practice, it is probably not greatly important whether or not your client can strictly be said to have reported the change when she had the conversation about CA entitlement with the work coach, because it would seem at any rate to provide good reason for the time for the late reporting of the change now.

So your client would be going on the journal, ‘formally’ reporting the change using the tab and then requesting backdating either on the basis that she did report the change in a timely fashion or alternatively had good reason for not doing so in that she was mis-advised by the work coach.