Defective claims for universal credit and date of claim
The issue in the case is whether the claimant by creating an account and clicking "Make a claim" had made a defective claim for universal credit? If he had then arguably when he perfected the claim some days later, his date of claim was the date he had created the account and clicked make a claim. However, the First-tier Tribunal decided that he had not made a defective claim and therefore held date of claim was not until the day he clicked "Submit claim".
On 26 March 2020, the Upper Tribunal dismissed the appeal. There is no further appeal by the claimant. The Upper Tribunal held that until the "Submit claim" button had been clicked no claim had been made - defective or otherwise. That means that in practice it is difficult to envisage a scenario when a defective claim for universal credit could be made.