The Social Security (Miscellaneous Provisions) Amendment Regulations 1992

Explanatory Note

(This note is not part of the Regulations)

These Regulations amend the Social Security Benefit (HospitalIn-Patients) Regulations 1975, the Social Security (Medical Evidence)Regulations 1976, the Social Security Benefit (Dependency) Regulations1977, the Statutory Sick Pay (General) Regulations 1982, the StatutorySick Pay (Medical Evidence) Regulations 1985, Social Security(Adjudication) Regulations 1986, the Statutory Maternity Pay (General)Regulations 1986 and the Social Security (Claims and Payments)Regulations 1987.

The Social Security (Hospital In-Patients) Regulations 1975 areamended so as to clarify the position of a person admitted to hospitalfrom local authority residential accommodation.

The Social Security (Medical Evidence) Regulations 1976 and theStatutory Sick Pay (Medical Evidence) Regulations 1985 are amended toprescribe the form of the statement to be issued by a medicalpractitioner either when he has not given a statement within one day ofexamining a person or when he is advising a person to refrain from workand the basis of his assessment is a report from another medicalpracitioner (regulations 3, 6 and Schedules 1 and 2).

The Statutory Sick Pay (General) Regulations 1982 are amended toincrease the daily penalty for a continuing offence under regulation 22of those Regulations, and to prescribe a penalty for single offences byreference to the standard scale (regulation 5).

The Statutory Maternity Pay (General) Regulations 1986 are amendedso as to restore a provision which provides that a woman claimingstatutory maternity pay or any other party who fails to furnishinformation required to help determine any question arising inproceedings under the Social Security Act 1986 shall be guilty of anoffence (regulation 8).

The Social Security (Adjudication) Regulations 1986 are amended byinserting a new regulation 64B which provides that where a decision in acase to which subsection (7) of section 104 of the Social Security Act1975 applies is reviewed, the review decision takes effect from the dateof the relevant determination as defined in that subsection.

Subsection (7) of section 104 applies to any case in which adecision falls to be reviewed on the grounds that it is erroneous inpoint of law following the determination ( “the relevant determination”) of a Commissioner or a court in another case that that other caseis erroneous in point of law (regulation 7(2)).

The Social Security (Claims and Payments) Regulations 1987 areamended in the following respects—

(1) regulation 4 is amended to specify which form a claim to benefitshould be made on (regulation 10);

(2) regulation 8 is amended to enable the Secretary of State to makedirections waiving the requirement to attend an unemployment benefitoffice in classes of case as well as in individual cases (regulation11);

(3) regulation 9 is amended to ensure that where the Secretary of Statecontemplates treating a claim for one benefit as a claim for anotherbenefit, he shall treat the alternative claim as having been made at thetime of the original claim (regulation 12);

(4) regulation 13 is amended to allow the words “remunerative work” and “engaged and normally engaged in remunerative work” to be construed for the purposes of paragraph 4(c) of thoseregulations consistently with regulations 4 and 5 of the Family Credit(General) Regulations 1987 in all respects except that those regulationsshall be read as if the words “not less than 16 hours but less than 24 hours” were substituted for the words “not less than 24 hours” (regulation 13);

(5) regulation 19 is amended to provide that in the case of incomesupport and family credit where there has been good cause for failure toclaim for benefit for only part of the period the claim shall be treatedas made on the date on which good cause for failure to make the claimcommenced subject to an overriding 12 month limit (regulation 14);

(6) regulation 21 is amended to prescribe the benefits for which directcredit transfer may be used (regulation 15);

(7) regulation 37 is replaced by three new regulations dealing with thesuspension and withholding of benefits, namely, suspension in anindividual case, suspension in cases which are identical to another casewhere a similar question arises and withholding of payment of arrears ofbenefit (regulation 16);

(8) Schedule 7 is amended to ensure that where claims are made inadvance under regulation 13 entitlement to income support begins on theday on which entitlement to the benefit claimed in advance begins ifthat is the pay day for that benefit but otherwise on the first pay dayafter entitlement begins (regulation 17(2)).

Minor amendments of a drafting nature are also made of the SocialSecurity Benefit (Dependency) Regulations 1977.