Restoration of Youth Allowance (YA) or Austudy for full-time students and Australian Apprentices 102-10040180

The need to restore a payment usually happens because of:

• changes in the customer's circumstances
• the review of a decision
• changes to specified events that have temporarily made them ineligible for payment
• the customer providing more information about their circumstances
• the customer provides their or their partner’s Tax File Number (TFN)

A claim for payment can be considered a request for a review of decision when:

• the decision was to cancel YA or Austudy
• the claim was lodged within 13 weeks of the decision

When restoring a payment, the customer's qualification and payability must be established, as well as any ongoing entitlement from the date the customer regained eligibility. If the customer’s circumstances have changed, the customer's record must be updated before the payment is restored to avoid incorrect arrears generating.

Students need to confirm that they continued to meet qualification as a full-time or concessional study load student for the period that their payments are being restored.

Australian Apprentices need to confirm they continued in a full-time Australian Apprenticeship for the period that their payments are being restored.

For more information, see Youth Allowance (YA) qualifications for students and Australian Apprentices.

Payment cannot be restored if the customer contacts more than 13 weeks after notification of the decision to cancel or suspend their payment. The customer will need to reclaim the payment to test their eligibility.

When checking if a customer has contacted within 13 weeks of being notified, take into account the time taken to deliver the notice. The date on which the 13 week period begins may vary depending on how a notice was issued to the customer. For example, online or via regular mail. See Customer initiated review of decisions.

If the decision is to not restore a customer's payments when they have contacted within 13 weeks of the suspension/cancellation notification, record the reasons in a DOC before referring the customer through the new claim channels.

If mail has been returned and the customer’s address details have not changed, proof of address details are needed before payment can be restored. This is to make sure future correspondence sent to the customer is not returned.

If the customer's payment has been suspended or cancelled whereabouts unknown (WUK), as long as the customer remains qualified and payable during the period of suspension/cancellation, their payment may be restored with full arrears. This may be the case even when the customer recontacts more than 13 weeks after the decision to suspend or cancel was given to the customer.

This is because it is assumed the customer would not have received the advice of the decision to suspend/cancel, if they were:

• not at their known address, and/or
• advice of the decision was returned to the agency

This means that the date of effect of the restoration is the date of the original decision to suspend or cancel the payment.

Each customer's circumstances must be looked at individually to determine if they could be considered to have not received advice of the decision to suspend/cancel, and if they retained qualification and payability during the period of suspension or cancellation and therefore receive arrears upon restoration.

When a customer’s cancelled payment is restored, any previous Centrepay deduction/s do not automatically restart. When restoring a cancelled payment, check if any previous Centrepay deductions were impacted by the cancellation. See Centrepay customer interactions.