28/06/20 to 04/07/20

More  of my Covid-19 Self-employed review forms have been returned. However we have now received revised instructions regarding how to treat the SEISS grants. The instruction now is to input as income up to 31/05/2020 only even though the grant is intended to cover a 13 week period and the ones I have dealt with so far only received their payments on the 19th or 20th May. We then received further instruction to hang fire and wait for an update.

The wage updates from HMRC records ( a VEP task) this week resulted in updating wages for one claimant as the average wage we had been using was not a true representation. We had taken an average of 5 weeks of which 2 were much lower than every other wage in the past 9-10 months. The other VEP was similar but had no effect as the claimant had no tax credits in payment as they didn't want to have to end their HB claim and go onto UC.

Another claim had ATLAS items relating to a change in circumstances on a UC claim. A partner was now mentioned on the claim. We had not received any ATLAS updates relating to this claim since April 2019 and on CIS their UC award appeared to end in July 2018 though there definitely had been UC awarded after that date. I don't know what has gone on and the claimant's income is not known between April 2019 and May 2020. Also the date the partner moved in is not known. The property is Council owned so I checked the Housing system. The claimant has substantial rent arrears and the notes mention the partner months ago and also that the claimant had been paying some off the arrears due to working extra hours at work.

Another new claim came in for hb and ctr. The claim is in advance of a move that is due to take place in a few weeks time. A backdate to 10th June has been requested however for another address in Hudds. On CIS the claimants address is in Sheffield. The claimant has sent in his UC screenshot that shows yet another different address in Hudds that he is claiming at. He didn't answer his phone when I rang him so I sent an email as there is some clarification required. His reply was that he hadn't intended to apply for CTR at all. He wanted to apply for HB. I had to word my reply carefully.

This week I have been reminded how complex and difficult this job can be sometimes.




Comments

  1. Sandeep12 July 2020 at 12:45

    Great reflection of your working week. Sometimes decisions can overrule logic such as using SEISS for a shorter period for what it is intended to cover. It goes against HB Regs but other LAs are also operating in a similar manner so one to 'take on the chin' and accept.

    ReplyDelete

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