Child Benefit stopped because of address change

[melpovey]

Can anybody help please!

 

Last year I went to stay with ,y mom for a few months whilst my house was being renovated.

I informed hmrc of the change of address. When I did my renewal this year for tax credits, they had my original address on file still, but my correspondence went to my moms address.

 

My mom returned the post to sender without my knowledge, otherwise I wouldve known that there was a mistake.

 

Anyway last week I noticed my child benefit hadnt gone into my bank (i have it paid weekly)

So I called them and was told that another dept had informed them that they had returned post, I presumed that mustve been tax credits, and my payments had been suspended, I explained the situation. Anyway I called Tax credits straight away and they said yes those payments had too been suspended, but as I had called and given my original addres those paayment would be reinsated. True to their word my Tax credits went in my vbank on the due day. But still no child benefit has been paid in.

Does anybody know how long that takes to be reinstated and why one dept can get it reinstated straight away, but he other cant?

 

I called today and the woman at the child benefit office was very abrupt and said there is no time scale and it had been sent to head office. My daughter is 12 years old so its not like shes nearly 16 or anything!!

[Jessica87]

When payments are stopped due to returned mail, an indicator is set on your child benefit record to say that the back office is dealing with your claim and no updates are to be made by the contact centre. The system is very very very old, so this helps prevent two people doing something with your account at the same time and you potentially having an overpayment. The contact centre will send a request to the back office telling them what your call was about and will leave it to the back office to update your records and get your payments restarted.

 

It may well be different now but back in my day, the contact centre for Child Benefit could update your Tax Credits records (they have access to the Tax Credits system) on the call but it didn't work the other way round. Even if it did, the indicator would prevent the Tax Credits advisor from updating anything, let alone restart payments.

 

Usually the contact centre will tell you the timescale for the back office to deal with the update, it changes all the time but with the recent Child Benefit changes and increased calls with kids going back to school etc, there may well be a longer than usual delay, maybe from 4-12 weeks.

 

As long as there are no other problems, you will get your money backdated, it's just a matter of how long it will take. Give them a call again in a couple of weeks to see if there has been any update. It's not good customer service to have been abrupt with you but when the back office is dealing with things, it can be very difficult (or impossible) to see whats happening, so the advisor may have very little to share with you, no matter how much you press them for information.

[melpovey]

Thankyou for your reply...so thats why the tax credits have been reinstated almost immediately? Im sure the woman on the phone said "head office" were dealing with it...is that the same as back office?

[antone]

"Back Office", "Head Office", "Central Office" and so on are often used interchangeably by government call centre staff. It's just a reference to another office with no direct contact from the public that does a lot of the nuts and bolts processing of benefits.

 

So yes, in your case I'd say they are the same thing. It's just easier for the contact centre staffers to use one of those terms than to say "It's gone to Centre 1 East Kilbride CB Section Team 5 A-G Caseload." Or wherever - I made that office up, but you get the idea.

[IdaInFife]

It took 5 weeks to get CHB sorted when we changed bank details a couple of months ago and was all backdated etc