Visit re invalidity benefit

gobbyash

Hi

This info is second hand but a friend of a friend is claiming for invalidity benefit and has had a visit from them to see if the claim is legitimate (which it is). Half way through the meeting the guy said to the friend of a friend, 'Can you tell me about this £45K in the C&G and what have you spent this £9k on in the SKipton Building Society?'.

The friend of a friend said it wasn't her account (which it isn't) and the guy promptly shut up, when he realised that s/he was telling the truth.

It has raised some pretty serious questions, like how has this guy got this information?

And how can he accuse someone of having money that they haven't got.

Also, the insinuation is that despite the friend of a friend not being able to work and having no money and having asked parents for financial assistance which they refused, it now appears that they may have several bank accounts with this money in it, which is likely to start a family feud. I am not clear whether the account is in the name of the parents or whether it is a parent re child account.

Thats about it. I was asked for some advice but did not know what to suggest so I thought that someone might be able to offer some advice on what I have described.

hjb123

How old is this friend?

These questions may just have been to trick her? Sometimes they may try and trick people into saying they have money!

When she applied for the benefits she would have to declare any savings that she and any partner had.

Hope this helps and hope the family feud hasnt kicked off!

CIS

DWP can and will access bank account records to check spending/savings levels.

It sounds like they've either had a report off someone or the name and details came up as possible match to someone who holds or held the money in question.

If the parents hold an account in her name she needs to look in to it, fast. The DWP invetigator may have only been doing a preliminary probe, now that she has denied having the money, they may investigate fully if an account exists in their name holding a large sum of money.

gobbyash

How old is this friend?

About 30 years old and suffers badly with arthritis amongst other things.

hjb123

With the benefits system its the genuine claimants that suffer the most - hope your friend perseveres through it all though!

elvis_bloggs

CIS wrote:

DWP can and will access bank account records to check spending/savings levels.

What happened to the Data Protection Act.

CIS

Doesn't apply in the prevention of benefit fraud, they investigate under the social security fraud act 2001.
http://www.opsi.gov.uk/acts/acts2001/20010011.htm

They can access information from :
(a) any bank;
(b) any person carrying on a business the whole or a significant part of which consists in the provision of credit (whether secured or unsecured) to members of the public;
(c) any insurance company (within the meaning of the Insurance Companies Act 1982 (c. 50));
(d) any credit reference agency (within the meaning given by section 145(8) of the Consumer Credit Act 1974 (c. 39));
(e) any body the principal activity of which is to facilitate the exchange of information for the purpose of preventing or detecting fraud;
(f) any person carrying on a business the whole or a significant part of which consists in the provision to members of the public of a service for transferring money from place to place;
(g) any water undertaker or sewerage undertaker, any water and sewerage authority constituted under section 62 of the Local Government etc. (Scotland) Act 1994 (c. 39) or any authority which is a collecting authority for the purposes of section 79 of that Act;
(h) any person who (within the meaning the Gas Act 1986 (c. 44)) supplies gas conveyed through pipes;
(i) any person who (within the meaning of the Electricity Act 1989 (c. 29)) supplies electricity conveyed by distribution systems;
(j) any person who provides a telecommunications service;
(k) any person conducting any educational establishment or institution;
(l) any body the principal activity of which is to provide services in connection with admissions to educational establishments or institutions;
(m) the Student Loans Company;
(n) any servant or agent of any person mentioned in any of the preceding paragraphs.

gobbyash

Clearly this friend would not be claiming the benefit if they had £45K sloshing about in a bank account and I cannot believe that the investigator would not have anything other than correct information so that leads to the parents.

If the money is in the parents name and it is the parents money then it is surely a !!!! up by the investigator.

If the money is in a parent re child account then why did the parent not tell the child about the money.

Unless it is an old account that the parent has started to use for their own personal savings.

However if it was me I would be furious if I was in a desparate predicament and my parents failed to help when they were in a position to do so.

CIS

Hopefully it will work out okay and as long as she is being on the level over the bank accounts then it should work out okay.

The information they get about bank accounts is usually taken from IR computers, they receive interest income levels from the banks so they can cross-reference any high levels of interest with people receiving benefits, the idea being that if the interest is above certain levels then they need to check the amount of savings held to see if it breaches benefit rules.

hjb123

Sometimes you wonder whether to trust the computers in some of these government organisations!

From experience - my parents live on a farm and are in the middle of applying for whats called Entry Level Stewardship - not sure whether any of you will know about this but we have to send details of our fields in. Anyway all our fields were correct with the RPA (government organisation) last year - they are computerised and got sent out to us on paper. This year they came out - no changes and they had missed half off! We had no changes but the computer had wiped half off and as a result we are missing out on a hell of alot of money!

To summarise: dont always trust the computers!

judexx

You say that your friend is claiming Invalidity benefit, but would I be correct in thinking that it is actually Income Support based on their incapacity to work ?

Since neither Incapacity benefit (nor invalidity benefit which it replaced around 10 years ago) are means tested the amount of savings a person has is no business of the DWP.