Overpayments

An overpayment is when we pay you or your landlord am amount of Housing & Council Tax Benefit, but you were not entitled to receive it.  If we have paid you too much benefit, we will usually ask you to pay back the amount we have overpaid.  This is called a 'recoverable overpayment.

Why do overpayments happen?

They happen for various reasons. Here are some examples:

• You have forgotten to tell us that your income has increase
• Someone has moved in or out of your home
• You may have moved out of your home and not told us
• You may have started work or changed jobs
• If you have other adults living with you, their circumstances may have changed

You must tell us about changes and not rely on anyone else to do it for you.  Even if you told the Department for Works and Pensions (DWP) about your change in circumstances, you must still let us know.

Which overpayments can we recover?

The Housing Benefit and Council Tax Benefit Regulations allow us to ask you to repay most overpayments.

However if the overpayment is the result of a Council, Department for Work and Pensions or Her Majesty's Revenue Services error, we cannot ask you to pay it back, as long as:

• you or the person acting on your behalf did not cause or contribute to the mistake, act or omission and
• It is unreasonable to expect you to have realised you were being overpaid at the time you received payment or notification of the payment.

In each case, before we decide whether or not to ask you to repay benefit, we look at:

• the cause of the overpayment
• whether you were in any way responsible for the overpayment
• Whether it is reasonable to expect you to have realised that you were being overpaid.

Can you reduce the overpayment?

In some circumstances we may reduce the amount we overpaid you if you tell us about your correct circumstances throughout the period of the overpayment.  If we give you benefit for the period you were overpaid it is called 'underlying entitlement'.  If you do have an underlying entitlement (which means you were actually entitled to receive some of the benefit). We will use this to reduce the overpayment.

How we recover overpayments

If we decide to ask for repayment, there are several ways we can do it.

• If you are still receiving benefit we will reduce your ongoing weekly entitlement until the full amount is repaid. The amount of the reduction each week is set by the Government.
• We can deduct the overpayment from future payments to your landlord (Housing Benefit only).
• We can take money back from your Council Tax account (Council Tax Benefit only). This means you will get a revised Council Tax bill.
• If you no longer receive Housing Benefit, we will invoice you for the outstanding overpayment.

We may use one or more of these methods together.