Home > Publications > Selected cases — Parliamentary > Selected Cases and Summaries of Completed Investigations - November 1997 - April 1998 > C.258/95
Summary of Selected Cases
DEPARTMENT OF SOCIAL SECURITY
Errors and delays in the payment of supplementary benefit and income support
Matters Considered
Mrs X complained about delays and errors by the Benefits Agency (BA) of the Department of Social Security including those relating to the calculation and payment of her son's supplementary benefit (Supp Ben) and income support (IS) entitlements and related compensation payments.
Summary of case
In 1984, Mrs X claimed Supp Ben as the appointee for her severely disabled son; and her claim was converted to one for IS from 11 April 1988. In January 1991 Mrs X appealed against the amount of the IS award and in April 1991 she applied for a review of her son's entitlement to Supp Ben. BA took no action on the review application until November 1992 and, after a review had been refused, it took until March 1994 before BA had fully implemented the outcome of Mrs X's subsequent successful appeal against the refusal. For reasons beyond the control of BA, the original IS appeal was not heard until April 1994 but BA then implemented the tribunal's decision within a month. BA made a number of errors in calculating Mrs X's son's benefit entitlement following the two appeal decisions and subsequent requests made by Mrs X and her representative for reviews, but they made ex gratia compensatory payments for the late payment of all the benefit arrears which they paid. BA had decided on 24 August 1994 to deal with Mrs X's son's claim clerically rather than through the computer system, but that decision led to several errors including failures to authenticate order-books, sending one order-book to Mrs X in an unfranked envelope and providing inaccurate information to the local area health authority in connection with her son's exemption from prescription charges.
Findings
BA were responsible for excessive delay in dealing with Mrs X's request for a review of her son's Supp Ben entitlements, and their implementation of the decisions arising from her two appeals was characterised by serious errors, (leading to non-recoverable overpayments of arrears totalling £11,217.54). BA also made careless mistakes arising from their well-intentioned decision to handle her son's IS claim clerically.
Remedy
BA apologised for the errors and delays occurring in Mrs X's case and made ex gratia payments to her totalling £7,905.74 to compensate for the late payment of IS arrears, along with an ex gratia payment of £111.98 to cover her incidental expenses.
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