Start date and missed payment
16. Mr R complains that he has not received responses to his complaints about his family’s UC payments. He says that the start date for the claims is incorrect and that his family should have received UC during the period 10 October to 10 November but did not.
17. This part of Mr R’s complaint is twofold – he says DWP’s decisions about what period to pay UC for is incorrect, and that he has complained to it about this but not had a response.
Decisions
18. The law says we cannot investigate a complaint where a person has (or had) the option to take legal action, unless we consider this is (or was) unreasonable in the circumstances.
19. There is an established appeal route to dispute benefits eligibility, including the start date of a claim, any period where DWP stops making payment and requests for backdating. This is a free process and people do not need a lawyer for it.
20. DWP wrote to Mr R to tell him it had decided not to backdate his UC claim. It included details of how he might appeal this decision which was to request an MR. An MR is the first stage in the appeal route and involves DWP looking again at the decision it made.
21. Mr R asked DWP for an MR but his request was unsuccessful, and the original decision stood.
22. Where a claimant remains dissatisfied with an MR decision, they can appeal to a First Tier Tribunal for consideration by a judge. This means the appeal is not considered by DWP, but by HM Courts and Tribunals Service (HMCTS). The MR decision DWP sent Mr R on 19 January contains this information and explains that an appeal needed to be made within a month of that date.
23. It does not seem that Mr R acted on this and so his opportunity to appeal DWP’s decision about the start date of his UC claim further has passed.
24. DWP also wrote to Mr R on 6 November 2022 to explain that his UC payment would stop from 27 September because he would be out of the country for at least a month from 5 October onwards. The letter contained information about Mr R’s right to request an MR of this decision within a month of the decision. Again, it does not seem he did this.
25. We have not seen any reason why Mr R could not have raised an MR about the period of non-payment – he knew how to do this because the information was given to him on the decision letter, and he had asked for this to be done for the start date.
26. Similarly, we have not seen any reason that Mr R could not have followed the appeal route to Tribunal in respect of the start date issue. Again, this information was given to him in the MR decision letter.
27. We acknowledge the health problems Mr R explains he and his wife experienced but note that these seem to have occurred before the decision of 6 November and the MR decision of 19 January 2023 were made.
Responses
28. In addition to the information DWP provided in its decision correspondence, we have seen that DWP did respond to Mr R’s concerns about this.
29. On 22 July, DWP told Mr R, via his online journal, that the backdating of his claim would ‘need to be raised to a Decision Maker, who will look at the reasons you have given and make a decision to as whether [it] can or cannot backdate your claim.’ The one-month timescale for doing this was explained also. This was after Mr R raised this issue the previous day.
30. Mr R complained about the 30 June decision via his journal on 1 July. DWP responded the same day to say it had raised an MR request to address this. On 31 August it replied to Mr R’s journal message of 10 August requesting an update on the MR. It did this again on 13 October in response to his 12 October request. Both updates reflected that his MR was still under consideration and no timescale could be provided for this to be completed.
31. Mr R requested another update on 2 and 3 November. DWP replied but seem to have thought this was in relation to the lack of payment in October after Mr R and his family went overseas. There was no further journal contact from Mr R about this matter, with DWP issuing the decision about the stopped payment on 6 November and the MR decision for the start date on 19 January 2023.
Summary
32. Whilst we realise it will be disappointing for Mr R, because there was an opportunity for him to deal with his concerns about DWP’s UC decisions via a legal route and it was reasonable for him to have pursued that, we are not able to consider this aspect of his complaint further. Any concerns he had about the UC decisions – including matters like DWP’s consideration of his medical evidence and the reason for claims being made when they were, for example – would have been looked at as part of this process.
33. Regarding the response to his complaints about this aspect of his complaint, we disagree that he has not had a response. We can see that DWP has responded to Mr R’s contact about its decisions. It seems that Mr R may have become confused about the distinction between an appeal about a decision and a complaint (which would be about DWP’s service rather than the benefits decision).
Issues ICE agreed to look at
34. Mr R originally brought his complaint to us in 2022. We closed it because it was not ready for us to consider at that point. We explained to Mr R that we expect complainants to have exhausted the organisation’s complaints process (including any second-tier organisation’s review of the matter) before coming to us. We also told him he needed to have engaged his MP before approaching us. We therefore recommended Mr R went back to DWP with a view to completing its complaints process and engaged his MP.
35. Mr R referred his complaint to DWP’s second tier, ICE, in June 2023. ICE confirmed what it would be looking at in August after a phone conversation with him. Mr R was not happy with the scope and asked ICE to amend it. In September ICE replied and explained it would amend one bit of the scope because it had originally got it wrong, but explained why it would not include the other requested amendments.
36. ICE told Mr R that it would not make any further changes. Despite this, Mr R continued to repeat his request for it to consider the aspects of the complaint it had already explained it would not be looking at. This led to ICE giving Mr R a deadline by which to accept its proposed scope. He did not respond. Because of this, ICE wrote to Mr R to tell him it was no longer going to consider his case and had closed this accordingly.
37. To help us decide if we should conduct a detailed investigation of a complaint, we look at whether there are signs the organisation has got something wrong. We do this by comparing what should have happened with what did happen. We have done this and have not found any indications that ICE did anything wrong in its handling of Mr R’s complaint.
38. Our Principles of Good Administration (our Principles) say that public bodies should tell people what they can expect and what the public body expects of them. They should also do what they say they are going to do and use clear language to communicate.
39. After ICE reviewed Mr R’s complaint about DWP and discussed this with him via phone, it wrote to him and summarised the issues it would be considering.
40. Mr R asked ICE to make amendments to the summary because he felt it did not refer to all aspects of his complaint. ICE considered his request and told him it would amend the summary to reflect that it was only Mr R’s wife who was not told she would require a NINO in May 2022 – the original summary referred to both of them not being told this. It added that: • His comments that DWP had failed to register all his complaints and investigate, and failed to provide an outcome to his complaints would be addressed, as its initial summary reflected.
• It was not able to consider his complaint that DWP had failed to respond to his complaint about it not backdating his UC claim. ICE explained that this was because a dispute of this nature could not be considered as a complaint – this in turn was because the backdating of a UC claim is covered in legislation and carries the right of review via MR and then Tribunal.
• It was not able to consider his complaint that UC registered his claim on 18 May 2022 and told him payment would be made from that date but was not in fact made until 27 May. ICE told Mr R that he had not raised this specific complaint with DWP and so it could not look at this until he had done so.
• It could not consider his complaint about not receiving UC payments in September/October because a decision such as this contained review rights (again via MR and then Tribunal).
• Mr R had not been specific about why and when DWP had refused to provide updates and ignored messages and phone conversations. Because of this, ICE said it could not consider generalisations such as this and suggested he raised specific aspects of the complaint with DWP.
• Again, ICE said it would not consider Mr R’s claims that UC advisors did not make agreed calls because he had not raised this part of his complaint with DWP, which he would need to do first.
• The same applied to Mr R’s complaint that DWP logged wrong information in its system relating to the medical evidence it had asked him to provide.
• Finally, ICE also explained that Mr R had not complained to DWP that it had provided us with incorrect information and so it would not look at this aspect of his complaint either. It did, however, advise that DWP’s handling of his complaint would be something it would be looking at – as its original summary noted.
41. This letter ended by saying ‘the elements of complaint we will take forward…will now not be changed’. The summary was repeated as per the 22 August summary, with the NINO issue being amended.
42. Despite this, Mr R emailed ICE to say he did not agree with the amended summary and asked it to change it.
43. ICE referred Mr R back to its letter which explained the elements of the complaint it would consider and those it would not. ICE said it had asked Mr R to confirm he was happy for it to consider the former by 22 September, but he had not done so. ICE explained that it needed to obtain this information from Mr R by 9 October and said that if he did ‘not respond by that day or continue to dispute the elements of complaint’ it would close his case ‘on the basis that no agreement as to the way forward can be reached’.
44. Mr R did not respond within this time but sent an email on 17 October. He repeated that ICE’s summary did not include all of his complaints and asked again for it to amend this accordingly. Mr R says the delay was because he was overseas, but we do not consider that this is relevant – ICE had already said it would not be amending the scope of the complaint it would consider.
45. ICE told Mr R on 18 October that it had closed his case. It explained that its previous correspondence had told him that ‘if you continued to dispute the elements of complaint, [ICE] would close his case…on the basis that no agreement as to the way forward can be reached. This is the stage we have reached, as you continue to dispute the elements of complaint.’
46. We are satisfied that ICE provided clear and consistent information in its correspondence with Mr R. It was reasonable and appropriate for it to close his case without considering his complaint further, because Mr R did not agree with the issues it told him it could look at and continued to complain about this. ICE had already explained why it would not amend the scope and set out its expectations of Mr R as our Principles say they should. ICE went on to close the case, as it had said it would do, which is also in line with our Principles.
47. For completeness, we consider that ICE was right in what it said to Mr R about the proposed scope. Like us, it cannot consider matters that should instead be appealed. It also cannot consider matters that have not been through DWP’s complaints process.
48. As there is no indication of incorrect action by ICE in this respect, we will not consider the matter further. We will also not consider the complaints themselves because they have still not been through DWP’s complaints process. Whilst we appreciate that Mr R has asked ICE to consider the matter, it has not been able to do this because of a lack of understanding and acceptance on Mr R’s part as to what it can do.
49. Should Mr R wish to agree to ICE’s proposed scope of his complaint, he should make enquiries with it directly. He should, however, be aware that it is not obliged to revisit the matter at this late stage.