CIS/2407/2004

DECISION OF THE SOCIAL SECURITY COMMISSIONER
  
1.	I dismiss the claimant’s appeal against the decision of the Sunderland appeal tribunal dated 24 March 2004.

REASONS

2.	The claimant submitted a claim form for income-support on 6 December 2002.  Work-focused interviews were successively arranged on 9 December 2002, 13 December 2002, 19 December 2002, 23 December 2002 and 9 January 2003.  The claimant attended only the last of those interviews and the Secretary of State decided, in a decision originally given on 9 January 2003 but subsequently revised, that the claim for income support should be treated as not having been made until 7 January 2003 when the claimant first contacted the office in the New Year.  (Strictly speaking a new claim should have been submitted before benefit was awarded (see regulation 7(6) of the Social Security (Work-focused Interviews for lone Parents) and Miscellaneous Amendments Regulations 2000 (S.I. 2000 No. 1926)) but the Secretary of State sensibly recognises that it is a bit late to raise that point now.)  The claimant appealed in respect of the period from 6 December 2002 to 6 January 2003.  On 24 March 2004, the tribunal dismissed his appeal and the claimant now appeals with the leave of a full-time tribunal chairman.

3.	The relevant legislation is set out in the Secretary of State’s helpful submission in response to this appeal.  I need not repeat it here.  It is sufficient if I say that the issue for the tribunal was whether the claimant had “show[n] good cause for not taking part in an interview before the end of five working days following the day on which the interview was to take place” (regulation 7(1)(b) of the 2000 Regulations), although the period of five working days may in effect be extended to one month in some circumstances.

4.	The Secretary of State relied only on the claimant’s failure to attend the interview on 23 December 2002.  It was accepted that the claimant had telephoned on 19 December 2002 and that the consequence was that the interview fixed for that day was cancelled and another interview was arranged for 23 December 2002.  The claimant’s failure to attend the interview on 23 December was therefore regarded as his third failure.  The claimant’s contention was that he did have good cause for not attending that interview because he did not receive written notice of the interview until 27 December 2002, no doubt due to a hiatus in the postal service because of the Christmas rush, and he had not been informed of the date earlier.  However, the tribunal found as a fact that the claimant had been notified of the date and time of the new interview fixed for 23 December 2002 in the course of the telephone conversation on 19 December 2002.  It was for that reason that the appeal was dismissed.

5.	The claimant now appeals on the ground that, in the course of the hearing, the tribunal was informed that the relevant office had been closed on Christmas Eve and therefore, by his calculation, he had contacted the office within five working days after not attending the interview on 23 December 2002.  However, with due respect to the chairman who gave leave to appeal, that is an irrelevant issue because the tribunal’s finding that the claimant did not have “good cause for not taking part in an interview” meant that it did not matter when the claimant first contacted the relevant office after the interview.  That finding by the tribunal as to “good cause” has not been challenged and was one it was entitled to reach and for which a detailed explanation was given in paragraph 4 and the latter part of paragraph 5 of the statement of reasons for the tribunal’s decision.  Accordingly, this appeal must be dismissed.

	(signed on the original)	MARK ROWLAND
		Commissioner
		6 July 2005