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

The need to restore a payment usually occurs as a result of:

• changes in the customer's circumstances
• a review of a decision made by the agency or at the customer's request
• changes to specified events that have temporarily made them ineligible for payment
• the customer providing more information about their circumstances

If the customer has had their YA or Austudy cancelled and a subsequent claim is submitted within 13 weeks of the cancellation, the subsequent claim can be considered an application for review of the original payment cancellation.

When restoring a payment, it is imperative to re-establish the customer's qualification and payability, as well as any ongoing entitlement from the date the customer regained eligibility. If there have been changes in the customer's circumstances it is necessary to update any relevant information on the customer's Centrelink record before restoring the payment to avoid incorrect arrears being generated.

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

Australian Apprentices will need to make sure they have continued in a full-time Australian Apprenticeship throughout the period they are being restored from.

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 not to restore a customer's payments when they 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 the customer's address details have not changed but mail has been returned, proof of address details are needed before payment can be restored. This is to make sure future correspondence 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 the customer would be taken not to 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 taken not to have received advice of the decision to suspend/cancel, and if they retained qualification and payability during the period, and therefore receive arrears upon restoration.