Category: Benefits

B, Regina (on the Application of) v Calderdale Metropolitan Borough Council: Admn 24 Jul 2003

The claimant appealed against rejection of his application for a grant in respect of works in his home for safety purposes. His son suffered a personality disorder resulting in aggressive behaviour. He sought a grant for the cost of creating separate bedrooms for the protection of the sibling.
Held: The grants are mandatory, but could not be used to provide for the safety not of the person suffering disability, but of another member of the family. The authority had correctly considered the issues before it, and it had accepted that a separate bedroom would be of benefit to the disturbed son’s own behavioural problems, but that did not go to his own safety.

Stanley Burnton, J
[2003] EWHC 1832 (Admin), Times 11-Sep-2003, Gazette 26-Feb-2004
Bailii
Housing Grants, Construction and Regeneration Act 1996 23

Benefits, Housing

Updated: 13 January 2022; Ref: scu.184842

Office national de l’emploi v M and M: ECJ 7 Apr 2016

ECJ (Judgment) Reference for a preliminary ruling – Article 45 TFEU and Article 48 TFEU – Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union – Article 15(2) – Regulation (EEC) No 1408/71 – Article 67(3) – Social security – Unemployment benefit to supplement income from part-time employment – Award of that benefit – Completion of periods of employment – Aggregation of periods of insurance or employment – Taking into account of periods of insurance or employment completed under the legislation of another Member State

C-284/15, [2016] EUECJ C-284/15
Bailii

European, Employment, Benefits

Updated: 13 January 2022; Ref: scu.561988

Chief Adjudication Officer v Bath: CA 28 Oct 1999

The claimant and her husband had been married at a Sikh temple, and lived together for many years before his death. The temple had not been accredited for marriages, and the Secretary of State resisted payment of benefits to the claimant as a widow, saying that she had not been married.
Held: The claimant’s appeal succeeded. There was nothing to make the marriage void, and there was a presumption of a valid marriage where the parties had gone through a ceremony and had lived together on that basis. The fact discovered many years later that the ceremony was defective would not mean that the couple were not married. This was supported by old common law rules. The validity of a marriage should be upheld wherever possible: ‘there is nothing to suggest that the Sikh marriage ceremony and the consequences thereof in the eyes of the Sikh religious authorities was other than such a voluntary union for life of one man and one woman to the exclusion of all others. In my view that ‘marriage’ is validated by the common law presumption from long cohabitation, in pursuance of the policy of the law that, in the absence of the clearest possible reason why there should not be such a presumption, a ceremony of ‘marriage’ bona fide entered by parties who thereafter who live monogamously and bring up children of the union should be respected and accorded the proper legal status of marriage. ‘

Times 28-Oct-1999, [1999] EWCA Civ 3008
Bailii, Bailii
Marriage Act 1949
England and Wales
Citing:
Cited – Sastry Velaider Aronegary v Sembecutty Vaigalie 1881
There had been ceremony of marriage which was prima facie valid. There was therefore a presumption of marriage. . .
Cited – Bibi v Chief Adjudication Officer CA 25-Jun-1997
A widow from a polygamous marriage is not entitled to the widowed mother’s allowance, despite the payment of national insurance contributions by the deceased father. There must have been a valid English marriage, according to the lex loci. . .
Cited – Hyde v Hyde and Woodmansee 20-Mar-1866
A marriage contracted in a country where polygamy is lawful, between a man and a woman who profess a faith which allows polygamy, is not a, marriage as understood in Christendom; and although it is a valid marriage by the lex loci, and at the time . .
Cited – Re Green, Noyes v Pitkin 1909
There had been a foreign marriage ceremony. The court applied the presumption of marriage from long cohabitation without ceremony. . .
Cited – Re Shephard, George v Thyer 1904
The parties gave evidence that the only ceremony of marriage through which they went took place in France. The case was argued and decided on the basis, accepted by the learned judge, that expert evidence showed that the ceremony could not have been . .

Lists of cited by and citing cases may be incomplete.

Family, Benefits

Updated: 13 January 2022; Ref: scu.79037

Commission v Malta: ECJ 3 Mar 2016

ECJ (Judgment) Failure of a Member State to fulfil obligations – Social security – Regulation (EEC) No 1408/71 – Article 46b – Regulation (EC) No 883/2004 – Article 54 – Old-age pensions – Rules against overlapping – Persons entitled to an old-age pension under the rules of one Member State and to a civil-service pension under the rules of another Member State – Reduction in the amount of the old-age pension

[2016] WLR(D) 116, [2016] EUECJ C-12/14, [2016] ICR 596, ECLI:EU:C:2016:135
Bailii, WLRD
European

Benefits

Updated: 12 January 2022; Ref: scu.560953

Knauer v Landeshauptmann von Vorarlberg: ECJ 21 Jan 2016

ECJ Judgment – Reference for a preliminary ruling – Regulation (EC) No 883/2004 – Article 5 – Meaning of ‘equivalent benefits’ – Equal treatment of old-age benefits of two Member States of the European Economic Area – National legislation taking into account old-age benefits received in other Member States for the purpose of calculating social security contributions

C-453/14, [2016] EUECJ C-453/14, ECLI:EU:C:2016:37, [2016] WLR(D) 19
Bailii, WLRD
Regulation (EC) No 883/2004
European

Benefits

Updated: 10 January 2022; Ref: scu.559474

Nyoni, Regina (on The Application of) v Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills and Others: Admn 4 Dec 2015

Sir Brian Keith
[2015] EWHC 3533 (Admin)
Bailii
England and Wales
Citing:
Cited – Tigere, Regina (on The Application of) v Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills SC 29-Jul-2015
After increasing university fees, the student loan system was part funded by the government. They introduced limits to the availability of such loans, and a student must have been lawfully ordinarily resident in the UK for three years before the day . .

Lists of cited by and citing cases may be incomplete.

Education, Benefits

Updated: 07 January 2022; Ref: scu.556474

The Secretary of State for Works and Pensions v Brade: SCS 1 May 2014

Extra Division – Inner House – ‘ interpretation of a regulation which determines whether or not a person is capable of ‘work related activity’. If he is, he is part of the work-related activity group (‘WRAG’) and will receive a lower rate of the state benefit called ’employment support allowance’ (‘ESA’) than those claimants who have only limited capability to perform such activity and, significantly, a member of the WRAG may be required to undertake certain activities as a condition of continuing to be entitled to the full amount of ESA payable to a claimant in that group.’

[2014] ScotCS CSIH – 39, 2014 SLT 680, [2014] AACR 29, 2014 SC 742, 2014 GWD 16-303, 2014 SCLR 737
Bailii
Scotland

Benefits

Updated: 07 January 2022; Ref: scu.525467

Gaygusuz v Austria: ECHR 16 Sep 1996

The applicant was a Turkish national resident in Austria. While working there he had paid unemployment insurance contributions. At a stage when he was unemployed he applied for an advance on his pension in the form of emergency assistance. That was available under the material Austrian legislation, but one of the conditions was that the applicant should ‘possess Austrian nationality’, and so the applicant was refused.
Held: Article 14 taken with Article 1P applied to the case and had been violated. ’36. According to the court’s established case law, Article 14 of the Convention complements the other substantive provisions of the Convention and the Protocols. It has no independent existence since it has effect solely in relation to ‘the enjoyment of the rights and freedoms’ safeguarded by those provisions. Although the application of Article 14 does not presuppose a breach of those provisions – and to this extent it is autonomous – there can be no room for its application unless the facts at issue fall within one or more of them. 37. The applicant and the Turkish Government argued that Article 14 of the Convention was applicable in conjunction with Article 1 of Protocol No. 1. They referred to the reasoning of the Commission, which found that the award of emergency assistance was linked to the payment of contributions to the unemployment insurance fund. 38. The Austrian Government, however, submitted that emergency assistance did not come within the scope of Article 1 of Protocol No. 1. Entitlement thereto did not result automatically from the payment of contributions to the unemployment insurance fund. It was an emergency payment granted by the State to people in need. Consequently, Article 14 of the Convention was not applicable either. 39. The Court notes that at the material time emergency assistance was granted to persons who had exhausted their entitlement to unemployment benefit and satisfied the other statutory conditions laid down in . . the . . Act. Entitlement to this social benefit is therefore linked to the payment of contributions to the unemployment insurance fund, which is a precondition for the payment of unemployment benefit. It follows that there is no entitlement to emergency assistance where such contributions have not been made. 40. In the instant case it has not been argued that the applicant did not satisfy that condition; the refusal to grant him emergency assistance was based exclusively on the finding that he did not have Austrian nationality and did not fall into any of the categories exempted from that condition. 41. The Court considers that the right to emergency assistance – in so far as provided for in the applicable legislation – is a pecuniary right for the purposes of Article 1 of Protocol No. 1. That provision is therefore applicable without it being necessary to rely solely on the link between entitlement to emergency assistance and the obligation to pay ‘taxes or other contributions’. Accordingly, as the applicant was denied emergency assistance on a ground of distinction covered by Article 14, namely his nationality, that provision is also applicable.’

17371/90, (1996) 23 EHRR 364, [1996] ECHR 36
Worldlii, Bailii
European Convention on Human Rights 14 1P
Human Rights
Citing:
Applied – Muller v Austria ECHR 1975
Article 1 does not guarantee a right to a pension of any particular amount, but that the right safeguarded by Article 1 consists, at most, ‘in being entitled as a beneficiary of the social insurance scheme to any payments made by the fund.’ A claim . .

Cited by:
Cited – Carson and Reynolds v Secretary of State for Work and Pensions CA 17-Jun-2003
The claimant Reynolds challenged the differential treatment by age of jobseeker’s allowance. Carson complained that as a foreign resident pensioner, her benefits had not been uprated. The questions in each case were whether the benefit affected a . .
Distinguished – Morris, Regina (on the Application of) v Westminster City Council and Another Admn 7-Oct-2004
The applicant questioned the compatibility of s185 of the 1996 Act with Human Rights law. The family sought emergency housing. The child of the family, found to be in priority housing need, was subject also to immigration control. Though the matter . .
Cited – Khan v Royal Air Force Summary Appeal Court Admn 7-Oct-2004
The defendant claimed that he had gone absent without leave from the RAF as a conscientous objector.
Held: The defendant had not demonstrated by complaint to the RAF that he did object to service in Iraq. In some circumstances where there was . .
Cited – A v Secretary of State for the Home Department, and X v Secretary of State for the Home Department HL 16-Dec-2004
The applicants had been imprisoned and held without trial, being suspected of international terrorism. No criminal charges were intended to be brought. They were foreigners and free to return home if they wished, but feared for their lives if they . .
Cited – Carson, Regina (on the Application of) v Secretary of State for Work and Pensions; Reynolds v Same HL 26-May-2005
One claimant said that as a foreign resident pensioner, she had been excluded from the annual uprating of state retirement pension, and that this was an infringement of her human rights. Another complained at the lower levels of job-seeker’s . .
Cited – Barclay and Others, Regina (on the Application of) v Secretary of State for Justice and others CA 2-Dec-2008
The claimant appealed against refusal of his challenge to the new constitutional law for Sark, and sought a declaration of incompatibility under the 1998 Act. He said that by restricting the people who could stand for election, a free democracy had . .

Lists of cited by and citing cases may be incomplete.

Human Rights, Benefits

Updated: 05 January 2022; Ref: scu.165431