Thread: Dept Work Pensions,

what was the court action?

dx

Are we speaking of housing benefit, or council tax bnenefit ?Generally speaking, overpayments are recoverable unless they have resulted from official error, where the claimant or the person to whom the benefit was paid, could not reasonably have been expected to realise they were being overpaid.


Examples of ‘amounts recovered’ are:

• payments physically received and attributed to the overpayment debt,
• amounts recovered by means of deductions from payments of HB,
• amounts recovered by means of deductions from arrears of HB owed to the tenant,
• actual amounts received through the sale of an outstanding debt to a collection agency,
• full amounts recovered by debt agencies who are acting on behalf of the LA,
• amounts recovered by debt management by means of deductions from payments of other benefits,
• excess CTB transferred to the council tax account, which then becomes outstanding council tax.

‘Amounts recovered’ does not include:
Reductions in overpayments due to the calculation of underlying entitlement, overpayments transferred to other accounts of the LA e.g. sundry debtors, Housing Revenue Account, suspense accounts - unless or until a payment is received and attributed to the overpayment debt through these routes, overpayments that have been written off and the full amount of overpayment debt sold to a debt collection agency, only the amount received for the debt should be recorded as recovered.
The time permitted seems unclear, but i will post later if i can find more info'.