Recovery surgery

Judge makes allowance parents wait months longer

Politicians were afraid to choose it, but the judge does: from now on, allowance parents will have to wait much longer to hear their case.

Emiel HakkenesNovember 4, 2024, 2:22 PM

The handling of the benefits scandal has resulted in a bureaucratic debacle in which decision deadlines are not met under any circumstances and millions in penalty payments have no effect. The judge is now intervening in a far-reaching ruling.

What issue did the judge rule on?

These are decision periods and penalty payments for the Implementation Organization for the Recovery of Allowances (UHT). How quickly should the UHT, which is responsible for compensating those affected by the benefits scandal, deal with parental objections? And, if the organization does not meet that deadline, what penalty does it owe to the parents?

Since last spring, an appeal (from a parent who disagrees with a UHT decision) must be dealt with within twelve weeks. If that does not work, the judge can give an additional six weeks. If there is still no decision after those eighteen weeks, the UHT must pay the parent a penalty payment: one hundred euros per day, with a maximum of fifteen thousand euros.

Do these penalty payments ensure timely decisions?

Not exactly. In total, the UHT has already had to pay around 44 million euros in penalty payments. And that amount is increasing very quickly, because of those 44 million, 30 million were paid between 1 May and 31 August this year — a period of 88 business days.

The UHT does not have enough staff to review all objections. And also too few staff to ensure that a decision is made within the extra time that the judge has given.

What are the practical consequences?

Although parents receive compensation (that penalty payment), they now have to wait months for an answer to their appeal.

Furthermore, administrative judges must deal with endless cases of parents who want the UHT to be ordered to pay a penalty payment. The Central Netherlands Court alone estimates that it will have dealt with more than a thousand such cases by the end of this year.

Finally, the UHT must deploy a large number of staff to ensure that the amount of penalty payments remains limited. This staff will then not be able to work on files that have not (yet) been objected to. But the longer those files remain in place, the greater the risk of new penalty payments. Up to and including last summer, the UHT has received more than twelve thousand letters of appeal. A quarter of them were treated. The average processing time of the appeal process is 549 days, or 78.4 weeks. This means that the legal decision period of 18 weeks is exceeded by more than 60 weeks.

Is there a solution for that?

Aukje de Vries, the previous Secretary of State in charge of surcharges, proposed this summer to extend the decision deadlines and, in extreme cases, give the UHT thirty months to deal with an objection. She withdrew that proposal because it may be in conflict with the European Convention on Human Rights, which states that everyone has the right to “a fair and public hearing of their case, within a reasonable period of time”.

And now?

Now, two courts, those of Rotterdam and the Central Netherlands, have taken the plunge. Yes, citizens have the right to hear their case “within a reasonable period of time”, but the law also takes into account the perspective of government agencies. The decision deadlines that they must adhere to must not be “unrealistically long”, but also not “unrealistically short”. According to the judges before the UHT, the latter is the case.

Just think: the organization has hired more and more staff, approximately 2,500 full-time employees work, and nevertheless, it is not possible to handle an objection within the legal period. And the penalty payments don't seem to make a difference either. This is what the Rotterdam District Court concluded: that decision period is apparently unrealistically short.

From now on, the UHT can take forty weeks from now on to decide on an objection. And the penalty payment for late decisions is reduced to fifty euros per day, so that the maximum of fifteen thousand euros is not reached after one hundred and fifty days, but after three hundred days.

Has that helped affected parents?

If the UHT gets more time, parents are less likely to go to court for a penalty payment. The question is who has been helped the most: the UHT, the allowance parents or the court itself?

The idea is that, with a longer decision period, the UHT will have to employ fewer staff to deal with objections in a timely manner and to limit penalty payments. As a result, employees can be unlocked from the files of parents who are still waiting for an initial assessment. If the first assessment can be done faster and better, fewer people will object, it is expected.

The case that prompted the judges to extend the terms was brought by a mother who had been waiting two years for her objection to be answered. The UHT received another twenty weeks of grace from the judge. For the mother's lawyer, this is a reason to appeal. That will be submitted to the Council of State later this month.

Debate in the House of Representatives

On Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, the House of Representatives will discuss the “recovery operation” of the benefits scandal. The issue of decision deadlines is on the agenda on Wednesday. That same day, the Parliamentary Committee met with the Foundation for (Equal) Worthy Recovery, founded by Princess Laurentien. She now works for the foundation, which assists allowance parents, laid down.

Also read:

A repeat of the benefits scandal is imminent, judge fears

The rules that benefit parents must comply with in order to be helped are not realistic and have insufficient attention to the human dimension. This is what the court in Amsterdam states.