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Neutral Citation Number:
Reported Number:	R(H)8/08
File Number:	CH 2675 2007
Appellant:
Respondent:
Judge/Commissioner:	Other Judges / Other Commissioners/Deputy Commissioners
Date Of Decision:	13/03/2008
Date Added:	11/04/2008
Main Category:	Earnings and other income
Main Subcategory:	Other income and payments
Secondary Category:
Secondary Subcategory:
Notes:	Housing and council tax benefit – whether a loan is income The claimant’s accountant had lent him money by paying his rent directly to his landlord for about 20–25 months between August 1998 and May 2001, during most of which period his claims for housing benefit and council tax benefit were under consideration. The council decided that he was not entitled to benefit for the period 13 March 2000 to 7 May 2001 because the loans constituted part of his income and that this took his income to a level at which he was no longer entitled to benefit. The claimant appealed. An appeal tribunal upheld the council’s decision, relying on Court and Commissioners’ decisions relating to income support, including Leeves v Chief Adjudication Officer, [1999] ELR 90, also reported as R(IS) 5/99, and Morrell v Secretary of State for Work and Pensions [2003] EWCA Civ 526, reported as R(IS) 6/03, as authority for concluding that as a matter of law there was no general principle that loans should be treated as capital rather than income unless there was an immediate and certain obligation to repay and finding that on the facts of this case, the obligation to repay, while certain, was not immediate at any time during the relevant period. The claimant appealed to the Commissioner. Held, allowing the appeal, that: 1. while housing benefit and council tax benefit are different benefits from income support, all are means-tested under Part VII of the Social Security Contributions and Benefits Act 1992 and a similar approach to construction should apply (paragraph 14); 2. Leeves and Morrell held that while loans, and in particular recurrent loans, may well be income if there is no immediate repayment obligation, all the facts and circumstances need to be examined to decide if this is the case, and the tribunal had failed to apply those cases correctly, as had the Commissioners in R(H) 1/05 and CH/3393/2003 (R v West Dorset DC ex parte Poupard (1988) 20 HLR 295, [1988] RVR 40 distinguished) (paragraphs 21 to 28); 3. the tribunal therefore erred in law in failing to consider whether, in the absence of an immediate obligation to repay, any of the loans made between March 2000 to May 2001 were properly to be considered as income for any weeks in that period (paragraph 29). The Commissioner remitted the case to a differently constituted tribunal for rehearing in accordance with directions given in paragraph 31.
Decision(s) to Download:	R(H) 8-08 bv.doc