Paul Burns Kirklees

21/06/20 to 27/06/20 Work during this period included new hb/ctr claims for persons in temporary supported accommodation. Also a new claim for a pensioner whose husband has recently passed away. They had been getting Guaranteed Pension Credit and he was the claimant for their hb/ctr claim. The widow has now submitted a claim form as we had asked her to do but her capital is above £16k. She needs to be in receipt of Guaranteed Pension Credit before we can award nay hb/ctr. Two VEP tasks this week, i.e alerts from HMRC informing of changes in wage. Both cases were very similar. We were using an average of December/January wages but they both then had fluctuating wages in Feb/Mar/Apr/May and now their June wage was back to the average wage we had calculated months back. I decided that the average wage for the first one was unchanged. The second one had returned to the wage level she had in Dec/Jan. Her wages had been lower in Feb/Mar but we were not notified at the time so I am unable ...

14/06/20 to 20/06/20 My first self-employed review form came back this week. I followed the procedure devised by our senior officers: input 1p per week self-employed income from the date the claimant stated they had ceased to trade, input their SEISS grant as income for a 13 week period (i.e total grant divided by 13 for each week). I will write to the claimant again in August when the second SEISS grant is due to be paid. Other work this week included wage reviews via VEP tasks (HMRC info). One claimant had recently been in touch to say her wages had reduced but the VEP info showed that they had actually increased. The next VEP task was for a claim where the claimant had also disputed the wage info we had recently received from HMRC. Both these claimants have been advised by Customer Services to provide their actual payslips. The only case out of the ordinary has been a claim from a person described as 'stateless' by the DWP. I have asked to see their Residence Permit a...

07/06/20 to 13/06/20 Finished issuing the self-employed earnings review forms for my allocation of cases this week. Each case was slightly different to the next. Some had had diary entries set in 2019 to ask for their 2019/20 accounts, some had led to HBMS notifications because their income hadn't been reassessed for years, some led to HBMS notifications because their self-employed income on Northgate was very different to the net profit declared to HMRC, some had non-deps, some hadn't had their income assessed for a long time but there had been no HBMS notification, some were Persons from Abroad and we hadn't checked on their Right to Reside and so on. In the end I decided I would ask for 2019/20 self-employed accounts and also ask for information on their self-employed earnings since the lockdown started. VEP (wage info discrepancies sent by HMRC) tasks resumed this week. I had 2 of these where the wage at the end of May was lower than in April. I intend to wait unti...

31/05/20 to 06/06/20 More new ctr claims received via new claims for UC. We have also been dealing with a batch of Housing Benefit Matching Service (HBMS) notifications from the DWP. Some of these relate to self-employed claimants who we had already identified as requiring a review. We are writing to self-employed claimants to potentially reassess as their income & circumstances might have changed since the lockdown. We can reassess on reduced income. Also many of them might have received the grant payment from the Govt aimed at those whose business has been adversely impacted by Covid-19. The grant payment has to be taken account of and their self-employed income reassessed. Nothing in particular that was new or out of the ordinary this week. The review of self-employed cases affected by Covid-19 once they start to come back will be totally new and, hopefully, a one-off for 2020 only.