Welfare Benefits

The following are examples of cases where a claim for Judicial Review is appropriate:

• Public law challenges. This is where a challenge is brought to legislation or a policy that is considered to be unlawful. Recent examples of this include challenges to the “bedroom tax” and the “benefit cap”.
• Decisions where there is no right of appeal to the First Tier Tribunal. These include:
  1. A failure or refusal to carry out a mandatory reconsideration of a decision;
  2. A decision to suspend (as opposed to terminate) a payment of benefit;
  3. Whether or not to waive recovery of an overpayment;
  4. A refusal to carry out an “any time” revision. In certain circumstances a benefit authority can consider revising a decision even where the normal time limit for an appeal has passed (13 months). If the benefit authority refuses to carry out an anytime revision then this can only be challenged by way of Judicial Review.
• Refusal of by the Upper Tribunal to grant permission to appeal from the First Tier Tribunal
• Interim decisions by a First Tier Tribunal judge. A Judicial Review to the Upper Tribunal can be brought against interim decisions of the First Tier Tribunal Judge regarding the case management of the appeal under the Tribunal’s procedure rules. There is no specific right of appeal to do this, so Judicial Review before the Upper Tribunal is the only option to effectively challenge an interim decision.

Judicial Review is a remedy of last resort, which means that in most cases where there is an alternative route to challenge a decision, such as an appeal to the First Tier Tribunal, a claimant will be expected to pursue that route. However, in some situations it may be possible to bring a Judicial Review claim even where there is technically a right of appeal to a Tribunal.

This can happen where the alternative remedy is not effective, such as where the consequences of waiting for the appeal to be heard before the First Tribunal would be so serious that waiting for the hearing would deny the claimant any meaningful benefit of success at that hearing. An example of this could be where Housing Benefit has been refused and a client is facing a possession claim under mandatory rent arrears grounds., but by the time the Housing Benefit appeal is concluded it will be too late because a Court would have made a possession order. In this situation a claim for Judicial Review may be appropriate. As a result of welfare reforms and problems with the administration of benefits there can be situations in which individuals are left without any benefits and are at risk of destitution. In such cases sometimes Judicial Review will be the only effective remedy.

An appeal to the Upper Tribunal can only proceed on a point of law, not just because you are unhappy with the decision of the First Tier Tribunal. It will be necessary to demonstrate that there has been some failing by the First Tier Tribunal. Points of law can include a failure to take into account relevant evidence, reliance upon irrelevant considerations, a misunderstanding of legislation, and a failure to apply relevant binding case law.

Below are the details of other organisations who may be able to provide assistance:

• Child Poverty Action Group  https://cpag.org.uk/
• Shelter https://www.shelter.org.uk/
• Disability Rights UK    https://www.disabilityrightsuk.org/
• Citizens Advice Bureau https://www.camdencabservice.org.uk/
•  Age UK https://www.ageuk.org.uk/
• Turn2 https://www.turn2us.org.uk/