If overpaid Housing Benefit has to be paid back, the Council will decide how it will be recovered. We will write to whoever is responsible for the overpayment to tell them how we are going to do this.

There are various ways that we can recover overpayments:

• By making weekly deductions from the claimant’s ongoing Housing Benefit entitlement, if they still qualify.

• By sending out an invoice asking for payment. If the invoice cannot be paid in full within 21 days, it may be possible to come to an arrangement with the Council to pay it in weekly, fortnightly or monthly instalments instead. We ask people to provide us with details of their income and outgoings for us to decide on a realistic rate of repayment based on their circumstances. The Council has a Fair Debt Promise Policy that recognises people can struggle to pay their bills.

• By making deductions direct from various state benefits, such as job seekers allowance/income support.

• If the claimant is in a Council rented property, in very limited circumstances we can debit an overpayment to their rent account.

• If we are recovering from a landlord we can recover an overpayment from benefit that would have been paid direct to him in respect of his other tenants. The law protects the tenants whose benefit is used for this, as long as they were not involved in the overpayment being recovered. The landlord has to credit these tenants’ rent accounts with the full benefit that they would have received and cannot treat the shortfall in benefit payments as arrears.

• If an invoice for a Housing Benefit overpayment is not paid we will sometimes use approved external debt collectors to make direct contact with a customer to discuss the money they owe to reach settlement. Alternatively we may use the County Court to either register the debt or get a County Court Judgment entered against the person who owes the money. This then allows us more options to seek recovery of the money owed.

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