When you receive a letter giving you a decision about Housing Benefit or Discretionary Housing Payments, or you receive a Council Tax bill giving you a decision about Council Tax Support, you have three options:
Whichever option you choose to take please do this within a calendar month of receiving your decision letter or revised Council Tax bill.
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If you want an explanation of the decision (statement of reasons), please contact the Benefits team. If you still disagree with our decision after you have received our written statement and wish to appeal against it, we will increase the one month time limit by the amount of time it took us to send you the statement.
To ask for a statement of reasons explaining our decision, contact the Benefits team.
In most circumstances you can ask us to look at our decision again. This is called a reconsideration.
Where people have asked for a written statement, we increase the one month time limit by the amount of time it took us to send the statement.
If you ask for a reconsideration, a different person will then look at the decision. We normally contact you within 10 working days to say whether our decision has changed and what any new decision is.
If we change the decision and your award goes up we will backdate it to the date of the original decision. If we change the decision, it could mean that your award goes down. You can appeal against this new decision if this happens.
If we don’t change our decision, we will tell you why. You then have a further month in which to make an appeal.
Benefit reconsideration and appeal form
If you have asked for a reconsideration, and are still unhappy with our decision, you can make a formal appeal against the Housing Benefit decision. You have one calendar month to do this from the date you receive our decision, but if you have already asked for a written statement, we increase the one month time limit by the amount of time it took us to send the statement.
When you make an appeal, a different person will look at your claim. If we don’t change the decision or we decide you should get less benefit, we will send your appeal to the independent Tribunals Service and send you a copy of the document, this is known as a response. The Tribunals Service will arrange a hearing. They will write to you to ask if you want to go to the hearing, but you don’t have to be there.
We normally make decisions about Housing Benefit appeals within a calendar month.
Benefit reconsideration and appeal form.
Before you appeal against a decision about Council Tax Support or 2nd adult rebate, you must first ask us for a reconsideration of the decision.
We have two months to reply to you. If you are still not happy with our decision after we have replied to you, you may be able to appeal to the Valuation Tribunal. This must be done within two months of the date of our reconsideration decision letter to you.
If we do not reply to your request within two months you can appeal directly to the Valuation Tribunal without waiting for our reply.
The Tribunal cannot hear appeals about what is in the council’s scheme, only about the way the scheme has been applied in your case.
They will arrange a hearing and write to you to ask if you want to go.
Benefit reconsideration and appeal form.
To ask for a benefits reconsideration or make a Housing Benefit appeal, you need to fill in our online form. Requests for reconsiderations can be made by someone on behalf of the claimant, but appeals must be sent in the name of the claimant.
Benefit reconsideration and appeal form.
Before you start the form
You need to complete the form in one go – you can’t save it and go back later.
You will need to tell us which decision you disagree with, the date of the decision, and why you think the decision is wrong.
If it is more than a month since the decision, you will also need to tell us why you did not fill the form in earlier.
Supporting evidence
The benefits appeals and reconsiderations form tells you what evidence and further information we will need from you. You can upload documents as you go through the form.
You can also upload documents separately – don’t delay sending the form because you don’t have documents ready. Use the further details box in the form to tell us when you will be providing the documents.
To see what types of document we accept as evidence and upload documents, see supporting evidence.
If you can’t upload your documents post them to Benefits Section, Cheshire East Council, PO Box 622, Crewe, CW1 9JH or you could also take them to your local library.
If you have asked for a reconsideration of a Discretionary Housing Payment decision, and still disagree with the decision, you can appeal against the decision. This review will be carried out by a panel of Cheshire East Council senior officers. We normally tell people the panel’s decision within 20 working days of receiving the appeal.
The panel’s decision is final. You can not appeal to an independent tribunal because Discretionary Housing Payments is a discretionary benefit. This means no-one has a right to get the support.
If you think we have not followed our DHP policy (PDF, 549KB) correctly, you can take action through the Corporate Complaints procedure. For Discretionary Housing Payments you can also use the judicial review process.
To appeal against a Discretionary Housing Payment decision, fill in the benefit reconsideration and appeal form.