Housing Benefit Overpayment Query

[maireadm]

Landlord says it is not his responsibility - that it is mine !

[Nightmare4banks]

Hi all!

Oh,that is terrible!

Maireadm,what is the exact wording of the letter(s) from the HE?

Please post it/them here,so hopefully I can give you better advice/suggestions.

[shellshocked]

Originally Posted by Bookworm

I have a lodger. She get Housing Benefit, which comes to me directly every 4 weeks by cheque.

I have noticed that when HB gets granted and we get notification, it comes with a warning that if the tenant/lodger were to lose their HB, the council would then be coming after us for repayment of the overpayment of benefit.

It came to me last night that this could possibly a very dodgy move on their behalf and wanted to throw it out here for you guys to comment. I mean, surely, the issue is between the benefit claimant and the council?
Why should the landlord be made a party and lose out financially for what is a fraud issue of which he/she may be totally unaware?
I mean, ok, if the tenant moves out and you keep on cashing the cheques, that's different. But if your tenant loses benefit or their circumstances change, and they don't tell you, why on earth should you even be involved in this?
It's going to be hard enough getting the remainder out of the tenant, never mind having to repay weeks or months of HB to the council, then having to go after the tenant yourself for those monies...

Any thoughts? Should it come to this (fingers crossed it doesn't, it nearly did once and that was bad enough), is it something that can be fought?

yeah my thoughts are this is why so many landlords says NO DSS, because the system is poorly thought out.

if they overpay either due to a error on their side or due to incorrect information given by the claimant or due to fraud then they will ask for it back or take out of future payments to recover.