Welfare Rights Bulletin articles

From 6 April 2017, a two-child limit applies in child tax credit (CTC) and means-tested benefits. Mark Willis and Simon Osborne describe the rules.

Mark Willis reviews recent caselaw about attempted appeals against tax credit ‘notices’ referred to by HMRC as ‘Statements Like an Award Notice’ or SLANs.

Martin Williams discusses securing child disability elements for the 28,000 families who lost out due to the failure of the DWP to notify HMRC about awards of disability living allowance (DLA).

Carla Clarke reviews the recent Supreme Court decision in Rutherford and others, and where this leaves the bedroom tax and potential challenges.

The roll out of the live and now full universal credit (UC) services has highlighted a number of problems. In some cases, these are caused primarily by interpretation of legislation and, in others, by DWP policies and systems. Henri Krishna summarises some of the main problems CPAG has encountered and shares solutions where we have them.

Dan Norris describes rules setting the benefit cap at a lower level but with a few more exemptions.

An experiment with the privatisation of decision making in tax credits appears to be in tatters after HMRC ended its contract with Concentrix (the private company contracted to investigate the correctness of tax credit awards) early.

The Ministry of Justice wants to make radical changes to the tribunals system. This will include making social security appeals ‘entirely online’ and ending multi-member tribunal panels.

David Simmons examines the normal and alternative universal credit payment arrangements.

Kirsty McKechnie describes some early examples of problems with the operation of the ‘full service’ of universal credit, as reported to CPAG in Scotland’s Early Warning System.