Recording decisions on a dispute

You must record the outcome of the client's dispute in OBMAN. One of the following outcomes must be recorded for each dispute:

• Upheld - if you believe that the decision relating to an obligations failure or sanction being imposed was correct you must record this as 'dispute upheld'. The obligations failure will be counted.
• Withdrawn - a client may, after disputing the obligations failure, decide to recomply before the sanction is imposed, or may withdraw their dispute and not recomply. In these cases you must record that the dispute has been withdrawn. The obligations failure will be counted.
• Overturned - when you believe that the client had a good and sufficient reason or that they did not fail their obligations you must record this as obligations failure overturned. The obligations failure will not be counted.

In all cases you must advise the client of the outcome of their dispute. A letter is automatically sent to the client.

If the client does not agree with your decision, they can still request a formal Review of Decision or Medical Appeals Board appeal (drug test failure only). They must do this in writing. The Review of Decision and Medical Appeals Board process should be followed.

Note if the obligations failure was initiated against the wrong client the status can be changed to 'failed in error' on the same day you initiate the failure. No letter is sent when the status is changed to 'failed in error'.

Review of Decisions for obligations failures are recorded in HIYA; appeals to the Medical Appeals Board for obligations failures are recorded in the Medical Appeals Database. However, the outcome of the review or appeal must be recorded in OBMAN. This will ensure that the benefit status can be resumed or regranted in SWIFTT depending on the outcome of the review or appeal.

Note that if the Review of Decision or Medical Appeals Board process finds that the originally recorded 'upheld' outcome should be changed to overturned, you will need to make this change in OBMAN.

For more information see:

• The disputes process
• Core policy Reviews and Appeals
• Core policy Medical Appeals Board