Secretary of State for Work and Pensions v JA (UC): [2024] UKUT 52 (AAC)
Upper Tribunal Administrative Appeals Chamber decision by Judge Church on 19 February 2024.
Read the full decision in .
Judicial Summary
This appeal concerns the intersection between Universal Credit and Housing Benefit. It is about what happens to the transitional protections enjoyed by a claimant who has migrated from a legacy benefit to Universal Credit when they move from a type of accommodation funded by a local authority by way of Housing Benefit (in this case, specified accommodation) and which does not attract the Housing Costs Element of Universal Credit, to another type of accommodation (in this case, mainstream rented accommodation), which is funded by the Housing Costs Element of Universal Credit.
The crux of the appeal is:
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Whether the operation of regulation 55(2) of the Universal Credit (Transitional Provisions) Regulations 2014 (the “Transitional Regulations”) to erode the Claimant’s transitional protection in its entirety in these circumstances involved an unlawful breach of the Claimant’s rights under Article 14, read with Article 1 Protocol 1 of the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (the “Convention”); and
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Whether the First-tier Tribunal judge who determined the Claimant’s appeal in respect of her entitlement was right to disapply that regulation. I decided that the answer to both of these questions was “yes”, and therefore dismissed the Secretary of State’s appeal.