Carer Premium and people who were entitled to Invalid Care Allowance in 2002

Disabiliy Rights Handbook says ‘If you were 65 or over and entitled to invalid care allowance on 27.10.02 you can continute to be entitled to Carers Allowance indefinitely after the person you cared for has died.’

Does this also apply to underlying entitledment to CA?

My client is over 80. His wife, who he cared for, died 3 years ago. He was not on PC, but at this point lost the carer premium from his Housing & CTB.
In May he aquired an AIF (still not entitled to PC though), and carers premium was suddenly added back into his Housing Benefit.

Am wondering if he has an underpayment going back, and if so, does anyone know of any Housing Benefit guidance etc that says they should have checked out how he was entitled to the carer premium at the point they removed it?  IE how we will go about trying to recover it for him.

Cheers
Janet
Greenwich Welfare Rights Service

If your client should have the carers premium (I’ve not checked that) then surely it was an official error for the local authority to remove it from their award in the first place. Official error HB/CTBdecisions can be revised at any time

My recollection is that ICA would be paid for the 8 weeks after death in most cases. This also gave a Carer premium for 8 weeks. However a pensioner could opt to remain on ICA rather than switch to RP and it was this that gave the ongoing carer premium. ICA had to be in paymnet for this premium to be paid.