Good morning

One of my landlord clients recently asked the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) to correct an error in a tenant’s Universal Credit (UC) housing costs. DWP had wrongly reduced the tenant’s housing costs by applying a housing costs contribution — the UC equivalent of an HB  non-dependant deduction (NDD). The tenant received the daily living component of Personal Independence Payment (PIP), so no contribution should have been deducted for her 27-year-old son, who lived with her and worked full-time. Her PIP award had been reported to UC nearly two years earlier, but DWP continued deducting around £90 per month during the period concerned. After a few exchanges, DWP accepted its mistake and paid the arrears for the two-year period.

The distinction between backdating a claim and revising an existing decision is important in UC advice. Backdating ordinarily means starting an award before the date the claim was submitted. Revision means looking again at a decision that was wrong when it was made and correcting it. Where the change occurs after the original award was made, the change in circumstances is normally dealt with by supersession, rather than revision.

  1. Backdating:

Backdating applies where a claimant meets the conditions for their UC award to start before the date they submitted the claim. Under regulation 26 of the Claims and Payments Regulations 2013, the usual maximum is one month.

  • The rule: At least one prescribed circumstance must apply, and, because of that circumstance, the claimant could not reasonably have been expected to claim earlier. For a joint claim, both claimants must meet this test.
  • Examples of prescribed circumstances: Disability that meant the claimant could not reasonably have been expected to claim earlier; illness that prevented a claim, supported by medical evidence; the official online claiming system being inoperative; or late notification that entitlement to a specified previous benefit, such as JSA, ESA, Income Support, tax credits or Housing Benefit, had ended. The disability test is not limited to physical inability.
  • Illustrative example: A single person is hospitalised for three weeks and makes their first UC claim on discharge. If medical evidence establishes that illness prevented the earlier claim, and the other conditions are met, the award can be backdated for that period. Hospitalisation or lack of computer access alone does not automatically establish entitlement.
  • 2. Revision or Fixing a Mistake

A claimant can ask DWP to reconsider an incorrect UC decision through their journal or by requesting a mandatory reconsideration. The request should identify the decision or assessment periods disputed, explain the error and include relevant evidence. Revision is not confined to overlooked evidence: it can also correct errors in applying the law.

  • Time limits: The normal deadline is one month from notification of the offending decision. A late request may be accepted, subject to the applicable conditions and an explanation for the delay, up to 13 months in total. These are deadlines for requesting reconsideration, not a blanket limit on the period of arrears.
  • Official error: Regulation 9(a) of the Decisions and Appeals Regulations 2013 allows a decision arising from official error to be revised at any time. Where DWP failed to act on relevant information already provided, this may justify revising the affected decisions and paying the resulting arrears from the correct effective date. The request should explain the specific error, when the information was supplied and which assessment periods were affected. The error does not have to be “blatant”, but the legal ground must be established. My earlier overpayment case, challenged after the claimant discovered the demand 16 months later, involved both disputed notification and alleged official error; it should not be read as a general 16-month time limit.
  • Illustrative example: A claimant tells DWP that her 12-year-old son, for whom she is responsible, has been awarded the highest rate of the care component of DLA (or Child Disability Payment in Scotland). DWP overlooks the award and omits the higher disabled child addition from her UC calculation. She asks DWP to revise the affected decisions. If the omission is established, DWP should recalculate the award from the correct effective date and pay any resulting arrears for all affected assessment periods in which she was entitled.
  • I also highlighted a case in which Albyn Housing Association helped a tenant secure a retrospective correction of underpaid housing costs after DWP failed to act on annual rent-increase notifications supplied by the Association. Although such payments are often described informally as a “backdate”, this is different from backdating a new UC claim.

I hope this clarifies the distinction: backdating concerns the start date of a claim; revision concerns a decision that was wrong when made. Do not assume that a long-standing underpayment is subject to the one-month backdating limit. If you are unsure which route applies, please email bill@ucadvice.co.uk or phone 07733 080 389.

Reagrds

Bill Irvine