council mess up with housing benefit

[lynzfa]

My mum recieved a letter today from the local council abouth her housing benefit,to say they were stopping her housing benefit due to an error on her claim.She was claiming housing benefit as she gets disability allowance for my brother,they were paying it for the las 3 years and have now said shw was overpaid as she only has 1 child that is disabled and not 2.She has never claimed for 2 disabled children and when she rang them regarding this they said it was an error on their system,but as she was still overpaid she still has to pay it back,so they have put a hold on her benefit until it is all paid back.Due to this though she is now £980 in arrears with her rent which her landlord is wanting asap.Where does she stand on this the council have told her she cannot appeal and there is nothing she can do about it.any advice would be great.

[Daytona2]

Given that they were the ones to make the mistake I'd say that the onus is on them to accept repayment at any rate that is convenient to your mother, even if that's £1 a week for the next 19 years, as occurs sometimes when people get a County Court Judgement against them to repay debts. However I know nothing about the workings of Councils, but MP's are usually quite good in this respect - use this online service to give them full details and permission to enquire on your mothers behalf WriteToThem.com, also contact the council housing officer as you mother may be evicted and require council housing. The Council hate having to house people and given that they will often pay for legal representation to help prevent it if at all possible, I'm sure they will attempt to resolve the situation rather than have her made homeless by another arm of the Council. You could also involve the local newspaper. It's a matter of tactics when you do so as you could use it later on to escalate matters if you don't get the right response

There's another good forum here Usenet - uk.gov.social-security for benefit queries - frequented by many serving and former council employees. They will be able give you detailed help. As spam harvesters harvest email addresses from Usenet, use a free throwaway address like Sneakemail.

Hopefully you get the idea - attack them on as many fronts as possible. Good luck - let me know how it turns out !

[lynzfa]

it is the landlord she has to repy the money to as the council have just stopped her housing benefit untilit is all paid back.they said they will recalculate how much she should be entitled to and they will take it back until itis all paid then she should be able to get something again but they have said it will only be about £8 a week