Housing/council tax overpayment

[mand p]

Hi,
I have recieved a letter telling me I have been overpaid and now owe £1500 HB and £500 CTax..added to this year now they want £2300 Ctax paid in £185.00 pm installments which I can ill afford..
This was from 17 Dec last year to July, due to a change in my WFTC.
Now, I went on Maternity Allowance in October and my daughter was born late Nov.
I wrote and informed them of her birth.
Then I contacted WFTC and told them.
Within a few days of the letter arriving to tell me my payments were to go up due to baby, I sent it by post to the Council...there after I had a letter to say our HB had changed due to change of circumstances and baby was added.
I never heard any more and assumed that I was being paid correctly.
Now, they say I should pay this back as I KNEW I was being over paid.
I did not.
Now, I don't think I'm stupid, but the information sheets from the benefit dept are confusing to say the least,come in huge amounts of pages (the last being 27 pages long) our benefit seems to have changed month by month even though nothing has changed.
I am now back at work, self employed and not earning very much (about the same pw before deductions as Maternity allowance) as having had time out I have to start again.

Just a note to say this happened before about 2 years ago, I was overpayed because I apparently didn't give the information required (I did and had proof).
I appealed but failed and had to pay it back.
I didn't want to get into a situation like that again, so I always make sure I tell them about any changes within a month.
I want to appeal again as I feel this is unfair, I told them this info as soon as I had it...any advice on which way to handle this???

[reallymadwoman]

bump

[Zamzara]

When you appealed before, was it a proper appeal to a tribunal or was it just a request for them to look at the decision again? You can do both.

Really your only option is to appeal again. The overpayment should not be recoverable unless you could reasonably have known it was wrong.

[emmaf01]

And perhaps a Subject Access Request to find out when they got this information from you?

And perhaps when you have evidence a complaint to the Local Government Ombudsman?

[surprise]

My daughter is a Housing Benefit Contractor and she will try and help you but she needs to know the answer to the following question

You stated that you informed the Local Authority of the baby's birth - however did you send in the tax credit? if so did you get a receipt

[mand p]

Originally Posted by surprise

My daughter is a Housing Benefit Contractor and she will try and help you but she needs to know the answer to the following question

You stated that you informed the Local Authority of the baby's birth - however did you send in the tax credit? if so did you get a receipt

Hi Suprise,
no I didn't get a receipt as I sent it in the post.
I had a C sec birth so I couldn't do much at the time.(Drive, walk far)
I haven't had the tax credit form back though as I do keep things like that together and the original document has definately not been returned.

Just to add, I had no idea I was overpayed.
The statement they have given me for the time period is confusing to say the least.
Between December and July the amount changed 10 times even though I was only on Maternity allowance....how would I know it changed so often??? And how can they change if money coming in hadn't changed (other than WFTC) during those 8 months??
I had no notification of these changes of payment either.

[surprise]

I have emailed your reply to my daughter and will post again when she replies.

[surprise]

Can you scan in the statement so that she can look at how they have worked out your entitlement and email it to her. I will pm her email address. Alternatively type exactly what was sent to you in an email to her.

[chaplinsbabe]

hi there mand p. i know exactly what you mean about the council - i am having the same problems again with them now. they are trying to rob us blind for supposed council tax overpayments (at the moment including our council tax each month for our property they are having £200 out of us which is crippling us). Housing benefits have now written for a supposed debt going back to 2006 when i had my second baby. now every year they try this on with us and every year it turns out that it is to do with tax credits who are just as bad. nowadays the local councils and dwp etc are linked to the tax credit people. it turns out that everytime the tax credits were changing our awards - even just by a couple of pounds which we didnt know about - the council were re calculating our benefits award but still paying the original full amount we believed we were entitled to. now 2 years later they are trying to claim back all the differences which were occurring every month - bloody bastards the lot of them!