The Road Not Taken

I am appealing against the decision made by the Job Centre denying my claim for Jobseekers Allowance. Read on to see my appeal…

My Appeal:

I was given the original decision on my claim for Jobseekers Allowance on 14/04/2005. The reason the claim had been denied was “…this is because you are not habitually resident in the UK for benefit purposes. In order for a person to be habitually resident, an appreciable period of time of actual residence, and not merely a settled intention to reside, is necessary.” Surely this must be definable, 6 months, 1 year etc.

I could not understand how they came to this decision so I contacted the decision maker. I explained my situation to her to make it clear and she asked me to send in a letter with the information we had discussed so the claim could be reviewed once more. I sent in the letter addressed to the decision maker.

The second decision which I received on 26/04/2005 stated “There are 6 criteria that we look at for Habitual Residence to claim benefit, and regret you do not qualify due to you having been out of the United Kingdom for a considerable amount of time, and have been back in the United Kingdom since March or this year, which is considered a short period of time. I would advise you to make a claim for benefit in around July of this year if you have not found employment before then.”

This information suggests that no specific time periods exist in the criteria to assist a decision maker with their decision on whether someone who has been out of the UK is legally entitled to benefit. If the law decides whether or not I am entitled to benefit based on 6 criteria, then surely these criteria are not ambiguous but clear and quantifiable. Surely a decision maker can not just decide what they feel is a considerable amount of time, or indeed a short period of time, as this is then open to personal interpretation.

If, after this second decision had been made, I had been shown in writing the criteria that had been used to make the decision, that these criteria were quantifiable and not ambiguous and how I failed to meet these criteria, then I would not dispute the decision.

However, I have not seen the criteria and therefore can only assume that whatever criteria was used to make this decision they were not clearly and rigidly defined if based on law. Therefore I seek a re-consideration of my request for Jobseekers Allowance supported by this appeal.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 4th, 2005 at 3:07 pm and is filed under Post-Trip. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.