In all your contacts with claimants you must always be aware of
Human Rights issues, and of the need to respect the
claimant’s privacy. It is particularly important that you
adopt this approach in any discussions which may touch on their
private life.
You should avoid any impression that you are examining the
claimant’s home or household for signs of any such
relationship. You must not ask about the claimant’s sleeping
arrangements in an attempt to find out whether s/he shares a
bedroom with another adult.
Claimants may however volunteer information of this kind
when, for example, confirming the number of children who live
there; describing how friends or relatives sometimes stay to help
out with childcare or explaining that their ex-partners stays in
the spare room whenever they come to visit the children. If the
claimant simply says their partner stays overnight when they come
to visit or care for the children you must not ask where they
sleep.
You should not normally ask claimants about the number of
bedrooms in their house but if the claimant has suggested that an
adult who lives in the house is a paying lodger, it is reasonable
to expect the lodger would have his/her room rather than sleeping
on a sofa or floor.
In the circumstances it will be appropriate to ask how many
bedrooms there are and what room(s) the lodger occupies, and to
test the answer in the light of other information/evidence. The
number of bedrooms and the ages/sexes of the other occupants of the
house will be relevant. For example the claimant may live in a 3
bedroom house with 2 children, a boy of 12 and a girl of 16, and it
will be reasonable to ask what arrangements have been made so that
the lodger can occupy his/her own room.
It is important that any questions you need to ask should be
directed at establishing the room the lodger occupies and their
relationship with the claimant and not at establishing who the
claimant sleeps with.
