What is an official error?
The term ‘official error’ is used when:
- an error is made by Social Security Scotland, the DWP or NIDfC
- no one else, including the client, materially contributed to the error
If the client or anyone else is at least partly responsible for the error, then the error is not an ‘official error’.
Examples of official error include:
- a court or tribunal ruling that Social Security Scotland has consistently misapplied the eligibility criteria to clients in specific circumstances, such as students or earners of different kinds
- misapplying the correct age or residence and presence criteria to the facts of the case
- an IT issue within the DWP, NIDfC or Social Security Scotland that causes an individual to be underpaid or overpaid
- Social Security Scotland mistakenly determining an application for Carer Support Payment against historic eligibility criteria rather than current criteria
- determining that an individual is either entitled or not entitled to Carer Support Payment in the face of obvious contradictory supporting information
- making a determination that is so unreasonable, no reasonable person could have made the same determination (Associated Provincial Picture Houses Ltd v Wednesbury Corporation (1948))
This list is not exhaustive.