HB appeal and appeal rights

HB appeal was heard without notifying me of the date and the tribunal found that the tenant did cause the overpayment but the calculation of the overpayment was incorrect.
The tribunal therefore directed the council to recalculate the overpayment. This recalculation would mean a lower overpayment.

I am not sure whether to request a set aside of the decision on the basis that I wasn’t advised of the date of the appeal or whether I will have new appeal rights when the new calculation is issued by the LA?

Any thoughts

You’ll have new appeal rights aginst the new o/p determination. It’d be worth asking for a statement of reasons though…

If you were seeking to argue that the o/p was not recoverable and there was evidence you might have adduced that wasn’t before the Tribunal the SOR will inform how you proceed from there.

I wish Tribunals wouldn’t do things like that.  What you have there is half a decision and the further appeal rights are not very clear.  I think a better approach in such a case is for the Tribunal to adjourn part heard, with a direction that whatever comes out of the new calculation will stand as the final decision of the Tribunal unless the claimant is still unhappy in which case s/he can restore his/her appeal to the Tribunal.

What might happen now in your case is that the Council and/or Tribunal thinks the matter is finished and that there is no further come-back.

I might cover myself in this situation by simultaneously applying for both an SOR and a set aside: “In the event that the Tribunal does not agree there has been a procedural mishap and declines to set aside its decision, the Tribunal is asked instead to regard this as an application for an SOR” - something like that

I am interested to hear that the Tribunal Service did not inform you of the date of a hearing, because they have done that with 3 of the last 5 housing benefit (bedroom tax) appeals I have had. I made a complaint about it at the last Tribunal User Forum, and was given the excuse that it was due to the regional office (which is the Liverpool one in my part of the country) having taken on 40 new staff over November and December last year, who were not fully trained. I know it is an excuse because the problem started in summer 2013, not November.

As far as I can find out, this is happening because 1. the Tribunal staff do not check the appeal papers to see if there is a representative named in them. 2. If the Tribunal Service sends the appellant an inquiry form, even when they do have me on record as a representative, they are not informing me if the appellant does not return the inquiry form. This used to aways happen. I would get a letter telling me my client had not returned the inquiry form and asking did we want a full hearing or a paper hearing?

It has just happened for the fourth time, and not only was the hearing listed as a paper hearing without informing me or the appellant, they did not inform either of us of the result. I only found out because I phoned the presenting officer at Oldham housing benefit department to ask whether she had had any correspondence about the appeal. I had phoned the Tribunals Service to ask whether they had a hearing date listed for the appeal yet, they told me there was no record that they had ever recieved the appeal. I discovered that the housing benefit department was informed about the paper hearing two months ago! They gave me the tribunal reference number. The client didn’t win, as far as I can make out.

I am starting to wonder whether this is an administrative problem, or a deliberately introduced change in method which aims to prevent housing benefit claimants getting fair appeal hearings.

Further to that, I have checked what the First Tier Tribunal regulations say about representatives (S.I. 2685/2008). Representatives are dealt with by rule 11, and this might give me a solution.

I think you might also find this helpful (it was an ESA case but the principle’s exactly the same, of course):

http://www.osscsc.gov.uk/Aspx/view.aspx?id=4115

BB v SSWP [2014] UKUT 0055 (AAC)