CCS/1885/2007
DECISION OF THE CHILD SUPPORT COMMISSIONER
  
The decision of the Child Support Commissioner in outline

1.	I allow the father’s appeal against the decision of the Leeds appeal tribunal in the joined appeals heard and finally decided on 15 February 2007 under references 007/06/00717 and 00718.  However, I do not do so on the basis of the natural justice grounds of appeal that the father has advanced.   As the tribunal’s decision is wrong in law on another point, I must set it aside.  I send the case back to the Secretary of State under section 24(3)(d) of the Child Support 1991 to revise the maintenance calculation by implementing the variation ordered by the tribunal with effect from 23 October 2003 but terminating it from the precise date that the father began receiving working tax credit (which appears to be 14 December 2004).

The background to this appeal to the Commissioner

2.	In the technical language of the child support legislation, the appellant is the non- resident parent under the maintenance calculation, the first respondent is the Secretary of State and the second respondent is the parent with care.  For convenience, however, I shall refer to them in this decision as the father, the Secretary of State and the mother respectively.  For all practical purposes the Secretary of State’s functions in relation to child support are carried out by the Child Support Agency (the CSA)

3.	The CSA is at present required by legislation to operate two child support schemes in parallel, an “old scheme” and a “new scheme”.  This is a new scheme case, governed by the Child Support Act 1991, as amended by the Child Support, Pensions and Social Security Act 2000 in March 2003, and by the relevant regulations.   This is because an application was first made in June 2003.  The application concerns a young boy who is now aged 10.

4.	As with many other child support appeals, this appeal is characterised by intense mistrust between the parents.  They have traded allegations and at times insults.  It is clear from the papers that there has been (and perhaps sadly still is) an equally acrimonious dispute over contact (a separate issue, outside the Child Support Commissioner’s jurisdiction, which has to be resolved by the courts under the principles embodied in the Children Act 1989, and not the Child Support Act 1991).

5.	In addition to the mutual antipathy of the parties, we have the highly complex decision making machinery for child support disputes, a system that will pose challenges for even the best resourced and best trained staff.  Given the well-documented difficulties facing the CSA, and despite the best efforts of some of its staff, the result in a case such as this is an adjudicative morass that risks failing to offer either clarity or finality to the parties.

The two linked appeals in more detail

6.	This appeal to the Child Support Commissioner is in fact one of two appeals, as the Leeds appeal tribunal was itself considering two appeals brought by the mother against decisions of Secretary of State (in practice, as mentioned above, the Child Support Agency).  The appeal tribunal heard both her appeals together and issued a final decision on 15 February 2007.  

7.	This first appeal to the Commissioner, under file reference CCS/1885/2007 (this appeal), is against the decision of the tribunal under reference 007/06/00717.  This was in turn the mother’s appeal (docs 9-11) lodged on 4 November 2005 against the Agency’s decision letter dated 1 October 2005.  The mother was appealing against “the amount of assessment”, which was stated by that letter to be £31 a week with effect from 23 June 2005.  I adopt the language of the Secretary of State’s detailed and helpful submission of 30 October 2007 (docs 280-284) and describe this as the maintenance calculation decision/appeal.

8.	The second appeal to the Commissioner, which is “travelling with CCS/1885/2007” in the language of the Commissioners’ Office, has been dealt with separately (and much more briefly) under file reference CCS/2695/2007.  That appeal was against the decision of the tribunal under reference 007/06/00718.  That tribunal decision was in turn the mother’s appeal lodged on 22 March 2006 against the Agency’s decision (letter dated 11 March 2006) to dismiss the mother’s variation application on the basis of the father’s alleged inconsistent lifestyle.  Again, I adopt the language of the Secretary of State’s submission of 30 October 2007 (docs 280-284) and describe this as the variation decision/appeal

9.	I am treating this appeal to the Commissioner as the lead decision and will refer to the common factual background only in this decision in the interests of brevity.  Inevitably, therefore, the two decisions will be need to be read together.  All references in this decision to documents are to those held on case file CCS/1885/2007 unless otherwise stated.

The proceedings before the Leeds appeal tribunal

10.	The proceedings before the Leeds appeal tribunal were subject to some considerable delay, due in part at least to the father’s reluctance to comply fully with the tribunal’s earlier directions.  A tribunal chairman first issued directions on 19 April 2006 (doc 38), mostly directed to the father.  These directions were not fully complied with.  The mother’s appeals were then listed at the Leeds tribunal, comprising a District Chairman and a financially qualified member, on 18 August 2006.  The mother (who lives in Yorkshire) but not the father (who lives in Kent) attended (docs 51-64).  

11.	The tribunal adjourned the appeals with further detailed directions.  These included a direction that the father be issued with a witness summons and that the Agency and the father provide further documentary information to assist the tribunal.  The father did not comply with those directions in full.

12.	The appeals were then re-listed before the same tribunal at Leeds on 20 December 2006.  Again, the mother but not the father attended (docs 71-78).  The father had written indicating that he could not afford to attend a hearing at that distance.  He asked for a hearing in Kent or for a new date to be set in Leeds and for his travel expenses to be forwarded in advance of the hearing.

13.	The tribunal on 20 December 2006 issued what it described as a provisional decision (docs 79-83).  The tribunal stated that a final decision would be made after a further hearing on 15 February 2007, giving the father the opportunity to address the provisional findings and produce further evidence.

14.	In its decision of 20 December 2006 the tribunal made a series of findings as to the father’s income as at a series of effective dates (23 October 2003, 5 April 2005, 23 June 2005 and 15 December 2005).  The Secretary of State was directed to re-make the maintenance calculations accordingly.  These decisions on the maintenance calculations were thus effectively final determinations, subject only to the Agency carrying out the necessary consequential recalculations.

15.	On the variation appeal, the tribunal reached the provisional view that it cost the father some £581 a week to maintain lifestyle as at 23 October 2003.  A breakdown of how this figure had been arrived at was included at the end of the tribunal’s decision.  The tribunal found that the same amount was needed to maintain the father’s lifestyle as at the subsequent effective dates of 5 April 2005 and 23 June 2005 and directed the Secretary of State to carry out variation calculations accordingly.  The tribunal found that the father was in receipt of jobseeker’s allowance (JSA) as from 15 December 2005 and so the effect of the variation ceased from that date by operation of law.  The tribunal also noted that the father was no longer entitled to JSA as from 17 November 2006.

16.	Following the tribunal’s provisional decision, the Agency prepared a supplementary submission setting out the various maintenance calculations, with the variations ordered, at the effective dates specified (docs 189-234).  In short, this stated the new assessments to be £74 a week from 23 September 2004, 5 April 2005 and 23 June 2005, and £87 a week from a date described on the submission as 23 October 2005.  The variation then ceased from 15 December 2005 because of the father’s receipt of JSA.

17.	The Leeds appeal tribunal then sat again to resolve the mother’s appeal on 15 February 2007; again the mother but not the father attended the hearing (docs 250-253).  The tribunal decided that the calculation of £87 a week applied from 23 October 2003, not 23 October 2005, and confirmed the assessments of £74 a week from the following three effective dates, followed by the standard £5 a week from 15 December 2005 when the father went on to JSA.  The tribunal issued its final decision to that effect (subject to the subsequent correction of one date on its own decision notice: docs 259-261).

The father’s appeal to the Child Support Commissioner

18.	The father’s application to set aside the decision of the tribunal on 15 February 2007 was dismissed.  However, Mr Commissioner Levenson subsequently granted leave to appeal to the Child Support Commissioner in the light of submissions made by the Secretary of State on the father’s application.  The father’s appeal to the Commissioner is made on four grounds, all of which are essentially natural justice points.

(1)	The tribunal’s decision to proceed in the father’s absence

19.	First, the father argues that the tribunal should not have gone ahead in his absence.  I do not accept this ground of appeal.  The tribunal’s powers to proceed in the absence of a party are in regulation 49(4) of the Social Security and Child Support (Decisions and Appeals) Regulations 1999 (SI 1999/991).  Its powers to adjourn are contained in regulation 51(4) of the same Regulations.  In this case the father was aware from the earlier proceedings of the importance of his attending. He was also well aware of the issues being considered, given the tribunal’s directions. I am satisfied that the tribunal considered the father’s absence on a proper basis in the light of its powers and against this factual background.

20.	I acknowledge that in this case the parties live some considerable distance apart.  The choice of venue is inevitably likely to inconvenience one or both parties.  The general rule is that an appeal hearing is held at a venue in the same region as the appellant.  In this case this presumption worked to the benefit of the mother, but in another situation it may have been the other way round.  In some circumstances it may perhaps be possible to arrange a live “video link” to enable participation of a parent who lives some distance from the venue for the hearing.  However, in all the circumstances of this case I am not satisfied that the tribunal erred in law or acted unfairly in proceeding as it did, not least as the father was given several opportunities to attend.  The paperwork with the witness summons also made it clear that travelling expenses could be refunded on the day of the hearing and that in appropriate circumstances the Tribunals Service could arrange and pay for overnight accommodation.

(2)	The omission to supply a typed Record of Proceedings before the final hearing

21.	Secondly, the father argues that the tribunal was wrong to go ahead on 15 February 2007 without supplying him with a typed copy of the Record of Proceedings of the 20 December 2006 tribunal.  I am unconvinced by this ground of appeal.  The father seems to have assumed that his request for a typed copy amounted to a request for a postponement, but made no direct request to that effect.  I also take the view that the relevant issues were sufficiently apparent from the typed Decision Notice and the earlier typed directions.

(3)	The tribunal’s acceptance of evidence

22.	Thirdly, the father alleges that the evidence before the tribunal was unsubstantiated and false.  This argument is also less than compelling.  Subject to ground 4 below, there are no specific details alleged as to what precisely was “unsubstantiated and false”.  More importantly, as mentioned already, the father had the opportunity to attend the hearings but did not do so.  I rely on the observations of Mr Commissioner Williams in decision CCS/1689/2007 at paragraph 14:

“14	I reject as completely without foundation the contention that this tribunal acted unfairly because it relied in its decision on information given in the form of [the mother’s]’s oral evidence at the hearing. The parties had all been given adequate notice of the hearing. That being so, the tribunal had authority to proceed in the absence of any or all of them and it exercised that power properly. It was entitled, and required, to make its decision on the evidence before it, including any oral evidence given at the hearing. [The mother] attended, as did the secretary of state's representative, and gave evidence. [The father] could have attended either personally or by a representative to challenge any evidence. He did not. That was his choice. There is no infringement of any right under the common law of England and Wales, or under the European Convention on Human Rights and the Human Rights Act 1998, where a tribunal accepts oral evidence in that situation.”

23.	To put the point more bluntly, as Commissioner Jacobs did some years earlier in decision CCS/2901/2001:

	“The proceedings before an appeal tribunal and a Commissioner are legal 	proceedings. They are not a game. If the absent parent is not prepared to participate 	properly in the proceedings, he must take the consequences.” 

(4)	The tribunal’s lifestyle findings

24.	The father’s fourth and final ground of appeal is that the tribunal’s finding that he needed £581 a week to maintain his lifestyle and that this included an estimated £300 a week (over £1,200 a month) for mortgage payments was “grossly wrong”.  He argues that at that time his mortgage was £500 a month and even when he re-mortgaged in June 2004 the total cost was only £1,040 a month.  Again, I am less than impressed with this argument.  The father’s own written evidence (doc 22) was that he had average mortgage repayments of £1,200 a month.  He is hardly in a position now to complain that this was misleading, or related to a different period, given his persistent failure to comply with the tribunal’s directions.

The working tax credit issue

25.	For the reasons given in the preceding paragraphs I am not satisfied that the father has made out any of his “natural justice” grounds of appeal against the tribunal’s decision.  However, the Commissioner’s jurisdiction is inquisitorial rather than adversarial.  In his Response to Direction, the Secretary of State’s representative makes a different point on behalf of the father.  He notes that the father, in his submission of 18 January 2008 (doc 303), writes that he has been in receipt of working tax credit (WTC) since 2004 and so should not be subject to a variation direction.  The Secretary of State’s representative agrees, referring to section 28G(3) of the 1991 Act and regulation 7(5) of the Child Support (Variations) Regulations 2000 (SI 2001/156).  He also points out that the Agency’s supplementary submission at doc 76 states that the first payment of WTC was made on 14 December 2004.

26.	This is clearly in conflict with the tribunal’s decision, which found that the variation ceased to have effect from a date just over a year later, as the father received JSA as from 15 December 2005.  If WTC was indeed in payment to the father as from December 2004, this would undoubtedly make the tribunal’s decision wrong in law.

27.	The tribunal of 18 August 2006 clearly appreciated the significance of WTC (see its direction 5b at doc 70).  The decision maker’s supplementary submission then listed the father’s WTC payments, which amounted to £2,2166.67 in the 2004/05 tax year (doc 76).  The tribunal of 20 December 2006 noted this figure in its Record of Proceedings (doc 183), converting it to a weekly income of £42.62.  It also recorded this in its Decision Notice (doc 187) in respect of the effective date of 5 April 2005.  It is then repeated in the Decision Notice for the final hearing on 15 February 2007 (doc 256).  The source of this figure seems to be the recalculation at doc 217 of the bundle.

28.	One of the many unsatisfactory aspects of this case is that there is little hard evidence of the father’s receipt of WTC.  We have his own statement that he has received WTC since 2004.  The information provided by the Agency (doc 76) is based on a telephone call to the Tax Credits Helpline – but there is no HMRC document to support those figures to be found in the papers.  
	
29.	Be that as it may, the tribunal not unreasonably seems to have accepted at face value the evidence about tax credits contained in the decision maker’s supplementary submission at doc 76.  The tribunal must therefore have accepted that the first WTC payment was made on 14 December 2004.  It follows inexorably that the variation should have ceased as from that date, and not as from the date a year or so later when JSA came into payment.  This is an error of law that means that I must set aside the tribunal’s decision.  I deal with the disposal of this appeal at paragraphs 55 and 56 below.

The technical jurisdictional issue relating to the powers of the tribunal

(1)	Introduction
	
30.	At this point, however, I must deal with a rather technical jurisdictional issue.  This issue relates to which decisions were actually under appeal before the tribunal. Understandably, neither parent has actually made any submissions to the Commissioner on this issue, preferring to focus on what they each regard as the substantive merits of the dispute.  However, tribunals’ powers are derived from statute and so they must proceed in accordance with that legislative framework.

(2)	The chronology of decision making

31.	The chronology of decision making events in this case is by no means clear, a process not helped by the original case file going missing at an earlier stage in the proceedings.  Reconstructing the sequence of key events must start with the original maintenance calculation.  I will then turn to examine the fate of the variation application.

32.	The mother’s original new scheme maintenance application was received on 30 June 2003 (docs 106-111).  The father was contacted by telephone on 23 October 2003 (doc 128), making that date the effective date for the maintenance calculation, which eventually followed on 4 June 2004.  That first maintenance calculation was for £15 a week (CCS/2695/2007, doc 12).  A second maintenance calculation was made on 22 November 2004 (doc 139).  This was a supersession decision, presumably in response to the father’s notification that he had a new child with his new partner.  This second maintenance calculation was for £13 a week as from 23 September 2004.  A further and third maintenance calculation followed on 29 September 2005 (doc 166).  Under this assessment the father was liable to pay £31 a week as from 23 June 2005.  This new assessment seems to have been notified in duplicate on 29 September 2005 (doc 166) and 1 October 2005 (doc 7).  

33.	The mother lodged an appeal against this third assessment (docs 9-11).  There seems little dispute that this is what the tribunal regarded as the first (or maintenance calculation) appeal (now this appeal to the Commissioner, CCS/1885/2007).  For completeness I should add that there was a further maintenance calculation made on 10 January 2006.  This reduced the father’s liability to £5 a week in the light of his receipt of JSA as from 15 December 2005 (CCS/2695/2007, doc 23).

34.	Running in parallel there has also been a long running dispute over whether there should be a variation to the formula assessment outcome.  At the time that the mother made her original new scheme maintenance application on 30 June 2003 she also raised the possibility of a variation.  She made it clear that in her view the father’s lifestyle could not be supported on his stated income (doc 124).  The mother’s application was acknowledged a year later on 3 June 2004 (CCS/2695/2007, doc 14).  

35.	On 12 August 2004 the Agency sent the mother what I can only describe as a curious letter (CCS/2695/2007, doc 19).  This letter stated that the variation application had been rejected and had ceased to have effect as from 11 August 2004.  It further explained that there were ongoing investigations and the case would be reviewed once any further decisions were forthcoming.   I agree with the Secretary of State’s representative that this letter is “incoherent and includes nothing about appeal rights” (doc 284).  I also agree with him that it was at best an indication that the variation application had been put on hold.  I do not regard it as a decision in any meaningful sense of that term (certainly as regards appeal rights).

36.	There appears on one possible reading of the bundle to have been a decision to reject the variation application on 16 July 2005 (doc 152) but, as the Secretary of State’s representative notes, there is no evidence any such decision was communicated to the parents.  Moreover, a separate file note also on 16 July 2005 by the same member of staff acknowledges the existence of, and lack of progress over, this variation application (doc 144).  That file note records the mother’s information as having been provided on 28 November 2003 (doc 133), but in doing so the mother was in fact simply reiterating what she had said at the outset in June of that year, enclosing copy correspondence (docs 135-138).

37.	Meanwhile, on 27 July 2005 the mother lodged a second formal variation application alleging diversion of income and inconsistent lifestyle (docs 145-151).  This second application was rejected for lack of evidence.  The date of that decision was either 28 September 2005 or 2 October 2005 (docs 158-159).  This decision appears to have been communicated on 3 October 2005 (doc 161).

38.	Finally, on 11 March 2006 an Agency decision maker, trying to make sense of this morass, noted that the mother’s original variation application, made at the time of the original maintenance application in June 2003, had apparently never been decided (CCS/2695/2007, docs 25-30).  She concluded that the effective date for any successful variation would be the original effective date of 23 October 2003.  In order to ensure the mother had adequate appeal rights, she made a formal decision to dismiss the original variation application and notified the mother to that effect.   The mother then duly appealed (CCS/2695/2007, doc 31).  The tribunal regarded this as the second appeal, now appeal CCS/2695/2007 before the Commissioner.

(3)	The issues before the appeal tribunal

39.	So what was actually before the appeal tribunal, and how far did its remit run?  As indicated, the tribunal evidently saw itself as seized of two separate but related appeals.  The first was the mother’s maintenance calculation appeal against the decision that the father’s formula liability was £31 a week as from 23 June 2005.  The second was the mother’s variation appeal against the 11 March 2006 decision to refuse her June 2003 variation application.

40.	At its directions hearing on 18 August 2006 the tribunal issued detailed directions (doc 99) requiring evidence to be produced and relating to the period starting with the 2003/04 tax year (in which the mother first applied) and ending with 11 March 2006 (the date of the variation decision).  At its first substantive hearing on 20 December 2006 the tribunal issued its provisional decision (docs 185-189).  This decision dealt with a series of effective dates starting with 23 October 2003 and directed the Secretary of State to carry out various recalculations.  Following receipt of the Agency’s recalculations, these were then confirmed as modified in its final decision of 15 February 2007 (docs 259-261).

41.	The Secretary of State’s representative agrees that there were two appeals before the tribunal.  However, he raises a separate argument.  He suggests that technically the decision maker on 11 March 2006 should also have issued separate decisions refusing to revise the intervening maintenance calculation supersessions.  Otherwise, he argues, the tribunal’s jurisdiction over the original variation ended on 23 September 2004 when the first supersession decision intervened.

42.	As the Secretary of State’s representative concedes, this is a “purely technical” objection.  He also rightly acknowledges that the tribunal can hardly be criticised for failing to adjourn for this purpose, given that the mother had been pressing for a variation without success for the best part of four years.

(4)	Was the tribunal acting within its powers when it sought to re-open the various maintenance calculations?  	

43.	This leads the Secretary of State’s representative to what he describes as a more important question.  Was the tribunal acting within its powers when it sought to re-open the various maintenance calculations?  He acknowledges that in reported decision R(CS) 5/06 Mr Commissioner Williams rejected the Secretary of State’s argument that the tribunal was confined to deciding the terms of any variation, leaving the consequential revision or supersession to be performed by the Secretary of State.  In dismissing that submission, the Commissioner ruled that:

“I do not see how a tribunal can fully perform its referred function of deciding whether there should be a variation in a case such as this, where the application is for a revision or supersession, without deciding at the same time whether there are grounds for revision or supersession. The reality will be that the decisions about the procedural and substantive variations will involve making findings about the same issues of fact” (para. 29).  

44.	In R(CS) 5/06 Mr Commissioner Williams was concerned with a variation case which had been referred to the tribunal by the Secretary of State under section 28D(1)(b) of the Child Support Act 1991.  The present case is rather different inasmuch as the tribunal was concerned with an appeal by the mother under section 20 of the 1991 Act, not a reference by the Secretary of State.  In my judgment, although the statutory context is different, the considerations are largely the same.

45.	Obviously the considerations are not exactly the same.  The Commissioner’s point in R(CS) 5/06 that there was no “administrative or legal logic in the Agency declining to have anything to do with part of the decision-making process and then demanding exclusive rights to a later part” (para. 31) does not apply in the context of an appeal.  However, the Commissioner’s other arguments, not least that allowing the tribunal to deal with the whole matter “avoids creating a separate decision that can give rise to a second appeal to a different tribunal” (para. 32) are equally applicable here.  In my judgment, therefore, the principle expounded by Mr Commissioner Williams in R(CS) 5/06 in the context of a reference to a tribunal applies equally to an appeal.

46.	However, the Secretary of State’s representative has a further submission, set out at paras. 26-29 of his submission.  The alternative submission is that in such circumstances the tribunal is confined to applying the variation it has decided to the maintenance calculation and would not be able to deal with any other aspects of the calculation.

47.	The Secretary of State’s representative advances three arguments in support of this alternative submission.  The first is based on the language of the relevant legislation.  The second is that as the applicant has applied solely for a variation, only the variation should be considered, and not the underlying maintenance calculations.  The third is that adopting the approach in R(CS) 5/06 means that maintenance calculations risk being re-opened when they were not disputed and appealed within the relevant (and, it must be said, short) time limits.

48.	I do not have to resolve this issue conclusively for the purposes of this appeal, as the tribunal’s decision has to be set aside on the ground identified in paragraph 29 above.  I note that under section 20(7)(a) of the Child Support Act 1991 a tribunal “need not consider any issue that is not raised by the appeal”.  However, that provision vests the tribunal with a discretion and it is certainly arguable that the mother’s two appeals were necessarily questioning the other assessments.  I am, moreover, not persuaded by the Secretary of State’s arguments, for the following reasons.  

49.	First, the construction advanced fails to take account of the fundamental difference between departures under the old scheme and variations under the new scheme.  It is well established that maintenance assessments and departures under the old scheme were separate decisions and carried separate appeal rights (see R(CS) 9/02).  In the new scheme where a variation is agreed it is the subject of a section 11 decision and part of the maintenance calculation (Child Support Act 1991, section 28D(1)(a)).

50.	Secondly, Parliament made a conscious decision in the new scheme to permit applications for a variation to be made at the very outset, before the maintenance calculation is made.  This was not possible under the old scheme with departures applications.  In this particular case this is precisely what the mother did.  It is not her fault that the Agency took three years to make a decision on her original variation application.  There is accordingly every reason for her appeal against that eventual decision to encompass proper consideration of the original and intervening maintenance calculations.

51.	Thirdly, there is also a compelling public interest in encouraging finality in litigation.  The child support adjudicative system is notoriously cumbersome, but there is no merit in making it unnecessarily more cumbersome.  A decision to impose unnecessary constraints on the scope of the tribunal’s powers would do just that.

Two final matters

52.	There are two final matters I should mention.  First, the tribunal in this case took a slightly unusual approach, issuing a provisional decision indicating its preliminary findings and conclusions, subject to receipt of further relevant evidence and information.  The tribunal then issued a final decision at its last hearing.  No party has objected to this manner of proceeding.  I see no objection to this procedure, providing it is made clear (as here) that it is the final decision which gives rise to appeal rights.  Indeed, this approach seems admirably suited to the type of appeal where the tribunal is seeking to give one last chance to a non-compliant party.  It represents a sensible case management technique wholly consistent with the tribunal’s inquisitorial function.

53.	Secondly, I must note for the record that the mother has informed the Commissioners’ Office that there has been yet another tribunal in this matter, albeit relating to a different period.  It appears that the father was notified by letter dated 20 June 2007 that he was liable to pay child support maintenance of £29 a week as from 5 April 2007.  The father appealed against that assessment on 19 July 2007.  An appeal tribunal at Leeds heard that appeal on 14 March 2008 under reference 007/07/02997.

54.	The Decision Notice provided by the mother states that the appeal was allowed and the matter remitted to the Secretary of State to recalculate child support maintenance as from 5 April 2007 based on the father’s final 2006/07 accounts.  The new decision is also to state the periods for which WTC has been assessed for the father in the 2007/08 tax year.

The disposal of this appeal

55.	I have explained above why the tribunal’s decision is erroneous in law on the single point relating to the father’s receipt of WTC, which should have brought the variation to an end at that point.  As the tribunal’s decision is wrong in law on that point, I must set it aside (Child Support Act 1991, section 24(2)).  The question is what happens next.  The Secretary of State’s representative invites me either to send the case back for rehearing by a fresh tribunal with directions, or to remit the case to the Secretary of State to revise the maintenance calculation by implementing the variation from 23 October 2003 but terminating it from the precise date that the father began receiving WTC. 

56.	I am satisfied that there is nothing to be gained by sending this case back to a new tribunal for rehearing. Accordingly I remit the case to the Secretary of State under section 24(3)(d) of the 1991 Act to revise the maintenance calculation by implementing the variation ordered by the tribunal with effect from 23 October 2003 but terminating it from the precise date that the father began receiving WTC (which appears to be 14 December 2004).

	(signed on the original)		N J Wikeley
			Deputy Commissioner

			22 May 2008