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IB overpayment, failure to disclose the fact that the claimant had started work
I haven’t had the full set of papers for this case so I’m not sure exactly what the issues are yet but I Ithought I might ask if anyone has any general thoughts.
Case is that someone getting IB began working for 15 hours per week in about 2000. In about 2009/10 the DWP discovered this and have now said there is an overpayment of IB back to 2000.
The person concerned has learning difficulties and the work could easily have been seen as ‘therapeutic’ under reg17 of the IFW regs. Unfortunately there was no letter from a doctor provided at the time the work started.
There does not seem to be anything in Reg17 to say that the claimant had any duty to clear the work as therapeutic with the DWP before starting it or to provide the DWP with such a letter, merely that the work had to be done ‘on the advice of a doctor’ and this seems to open up the prospect of a retrospective decision that it was therapeutic all along.
If it were possible to retrospectively decide that the work was therapeutic I can also see a problem with Reg 32 of the C&P regs which then ,as now, required a claimant to disclose any change of circumstances that they might reasonably realise would affect their claim. There may be some arguments concerning what unambiguous instructions were given to the claimant about what to report and there might even be some arguments about what happened when the IB was reviewed (it must have been reviewed at least once since 2000, I seem to remember that in about 2006 there was a progarmme to review IB at least every five years….......sighs.. those were the days!)
Any thoughts or experiences gratefully recieved!
Pete.