Hb cancelled as only claiming Child Tax Credit

HB have advised they have cancelled claim as claimant cannot claim HB indefinitely with only CTC as income.
He has applied for CB but this in being investigated as mother claims despite child in care of father via social work for nearly 12 mths.
Refused IS as no CB and claimant refuses to claim JSA as child under 5
Can HB do this?

thanks

It sounds as if they don’t believe him and they have made an adverse inference that he has some other undisclosed source of income or capital sufficient to disqualify him from HB.  That is the only way they could lawfully do something like that:

- there is no technical rule that automatically disqualifies a person from HB if they fail to claim DWP benefits they are entitled to
- the suspension and termination mechanism only applies where the claimant has failed to supply specified evidence

So that leaves the Council with the option of saying, basically, “come off it, you are not just surviving on CTC”.

There is a right to appeal of course.  While the Tribunal will decide on balance of probabiloity, with a slight leaning towards the claimant because the Council are the ones making the assertion that needs to be supported, it really wouldn’t do any harm for the claimant to do as much as possible to demonstrate how he is indeed surviving this way: a list of weekly outgoings, audit trail to support meagre purchases (till receipts, debits on bank statement).  That might be the only way to persuade the Council to change their minds without escalating it.

thanks HB Anorak, useful pointers to try and prevent going to appeal.

Child Benefit is usually suspended when a dispute arises as to who is the person looking after the child. Although I understand JCP policy is to not award Income Support where someone else is getting Child Benefit, it can and does award it where the claim has been suspended. Child Benefit does not have to be in payment to anyone to allow the claim to succeed, provided it is not in payment to someone else.

In addition to the above on Housing Benefit, I’d advise a claim for Child Benefit, get it suspended and claim Income Support while you’re waiting for HMRC to decide who’s entitled to Child Benefit.

Perhaps you could consider contacting social worker (who will probably be working for the same council as HB decision maker ?) who has placed the child in the fathers custody. They would presumably be in a position to support your clients claims that CTC is his only income, and that he does in fact have custody of the child, and therefore the most appropriate person to receive child benefit. If the SWD were prepared to provide evidence of the above then that evidence would possibly address the IS/CB problem as well as HB problem without the need to go to appeal.