CK v Secretary of State for Work & Pensions: [2024] UKUT 331 (AAC)
Upper Tribunal Administrative Appeals Chamber decision by Judge Stout on 18 October 2024
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Judicial Summary
UNIVERSAL CREDIT (45) Regulation 26 of the Universal Credit etc (Claims and Payments) Regulations 2013 requires a claim for Universal Credit to be made on the first day of the period in respect of which the claim is made, unless the so-called ‘backdating provisions’ apply, in which case the claim may be back-dated by up to a month. By regulation 26(2), two requirements must be fulfilled: (a) one or more of the circumstances in sub-paragraph (3) must apply or have applied to the claimant; and (b) it must be the case that, as a result of that or those circumstances, the claimant could not reasonably be expected to claim earlier. The Tribunal in this case focused on whether one of the sub-paragraph (3) circumstances applied (in particular, in this case, late notification of expiry of an existing benefit). The Tribunal failed to give adequate reasons for why it had concluded that the claimant’s further delay after receiving the late notification was (or was not) both a result of the late notification and reasonable.