Ideas please! on-off entitlement during perod between claim and decision.

My client is a Polish national who clamed HB in July. At that time he was not working or signing on.  Subsequent to that he seems to have had periods in and out of agency work from about August onwards- he could not tell me exact dates but is going to try to find out.  He eventually got a refusal decsion in December stating he was classed as economically inactive and therefore had no R2R.  Does not appear to have any other route into R2R as far as I can tell. 

My thoughts at the moment are to make backdated claims for any periods he was working during the last 6 months, and argue delay until decison on the July claim, language difficulties,etc. to hopefuly persuade them of good cause for lateness. 

Would there be any point in appealling refusal, gven that he wasn’t actually working at date of claim and for periods on and off after that?  He seems to have been working at the date of decision in December so probably had R2R at that point. 

I was also wondering about trying to persuade them to treat the July claim as an advance claim for any periods of work within 13 weeks of date of claim.  But does he count as having failed the HRT, having failed R2R? 

Any ideas as to how to best approach this welcome!!  Thanks.