19/04/20 to 25/04/20

Another week working from home. More and more new claims for ctr now coming in due to the effects of the Covid-19 outbreak on people's employment and finances. Nearly all are new UC claimants. Once their UC award is calculated we can then assess them for ctr. We also continue to receive monthly award updates for existing UC claimants. Some no longer qualify due to changes in their wages or AIF amounts. We  have a standard non-qualifier letter to which I have been adding an extra paragraph (when I remember) stating that if you have been furloughed then your ctr entitlement might resume when we get your next monthly UC award update. A couple of new ctr claims received via a UC claim were for people living with their parents and therefore not liable to pay council tax. I still processed these claims & issued our standard ineligible letter.
One ctr claim received via a UC claim quoted an address where the customer was not liable. It appeared to be his parents address yet the document received stated that £600 pcm rent was being charged. I suspected that the claimant was no longer living with his parents. I rang him and he confirmed he hadn't lived with his parents for some time. He provided his actual address and he is already registered there for ctax so I advised that I will assess his entitlement for ctr once we are notified of his UC award breakdown.
We are also still also receiving routine ATLAS updates from the DWP. These occasionally bring up previous processing errors. A notification that someone's Carers Allowance award had ended led me down a trail whereby I uncovered a non-dependant had passed away without us being informed. The property involved 2 separate claims as a mother & daughter were joint tenants. The non-dep was the mum's mum, i.e the daughter's grandma. She had been added to one of the claims only when she should have appeared on both. There were 4 adults in a 3-bed house yet we were incorrectly applying the bedroom tax to the granddaughter's claim. We had also been calculating ctr on the wrong % liability for the daughter - 50% liability when she was actually only 1/3 liable with her mum & mum's partner 2/3 liable.
Another ATLAS Carers Allowance update was for a claim that was being assessed on 50% rent liability as a joint tenant with his father but assessed on 100% council tax liability. This turned out to be correct - the father had an SMI disregard meaning he couldn't be made jointly liable. The son had to be solely charged for ctax (but with 25% disregard for his father due to SMI). The ctr was therefore worked out on a 75% charge for the son and not a 50% charge.
The major thing I learned is that I am good at identifying when there is something wrong with a claim or when something is wrong with information received.
I also was reminded about the 52 week protection rule when an hb claim is ended or entitlement reduced following the death of a claim member.