Thread: Council Tax and Housing Benefit Overpayment help

Hi Andrew

You need to appeal the decison of the overpayment. You only have 28days from the date at the top of the letter from LA. There is an extension to this 28 days of 12 monthts but only if there is good reason to it being appealed late.

Ok i need to know a few things first to see if you would have a chance at a tribunal.
1 Is this your first claim for housing benefit/ council tax?

2 Is there any illnesses/disability?

Originally Posted by v13cky

Hi Andrew

You need to appeal the decison of the overpayment. You only have 28days from the date at the top of the letter from LA. There is an extension to this 28 days of 12 monthts but only if there is good reason to it being appealed late.

Ok i need to know a few things first to see if you would have a chance at a tribunal.
1 Is this your first claim for housing benefit/ council tax?

2 Is there any illnesses/disability?

1. can you ellorbate what you mean?
2. yes i have dsylecia and speech and language problems, and have mental health problems

Andrew

1 Is this your first claim for housing benefit/council tax benefit?
(Have you ever claimed housing benefit before? even at a different address.) sorry can not make the question anymore straight forward.

2 Can a doctor confirm in writing your illnesses?

Originally Posted by v13cky

Andrew

1 Is this your first claim for housing benefit/council tax benefit?
(Have you ever claimed housing benefit before? even at a different address.) sorry can not make the question anymore straight forward.

2 Can a doctor confirm in writing your illnesses?

1. Yes i have claimed it before at the present address and antoher address but i was exempt so never got a Breakdown off what everything meant, i only got this after my finacee started working so had nothing to compare against

2. yes a doctor can confirm each of the above as i have got medical reports detailign it

the appeal was submit about 20-30 days ago with no reply as yet

Andrew

Firstly it takes up to 12 - 16 weeks for h/b appeal to take place. There will be an internal review of there original decison, which never usually overturns there decison. This is then sent to the appeal services who will prepare all paperwork (submisson) this paperwork consists of LA reasons for the overpayment, how it came about, why they think you should have reasonabily been expected to have noticed the error, it also includeds copy of your claim for h/b and your appeal letter.

When this submisson is sent to you there is an enquiry form in it called a tas1, this needs to be returned signed and dated by you within 14 days or the appeal will be struck out.

Prepare well in advance for the tribunal, try to get some one from your local CAB office or free advice agency to represent you during the appeal. If you can not get someone to represent you get back to me nearer the time i will help you prepare the submisson, and you can represent yourself.

On sending back the tas1 to the appeal service you will recieve a date for the appeal, usually within the 4 - 6 weeks following the return of the tas1.

On the day you will sit before a chairman who is a lawyer, he will question you on your resons for not having seen the error (this you have made clear to me in your last post and i belive is cause enough not to have been reasonably expected you to notice the error, but then on the other hand they may see that your girlfriend could).

Hi Andrew,
I have had exactly the same problem from my council. I have been fighting with them since last June. Firstly someone put my working tax credit in twice and then they put my wages through as monthly rather than 4 weekly, creating an overpayment. I filled in all the forms for appeal. They then discovered they had made the first mistake and asked me to not reply to the appeal and it would be struck out. Then they would access my acount again and i would be entitled to fresh appeal rights. I was not happy with the amount they had written off, (£242) from over a thousand so i have spent many hours in meetings with them. they have since discovered another 2 departmental mistakes and are now considering writing off another £380 and just under £200. I have been waiting for a decision for about 3 months now. they say it has to go to top management. I would advise you to appeal and keep pestering them. The council do not work like the tax credits. Tax Credits base your income on a yearly basis, the council only work off 2 monthly wage slips and calculate your earnings from that until the next review, if you have worked overtime in they 2 months then you will be entilted to less rebate. Years ago this is the way they worked out your Fizz money so you could work lots of overtime for 4 months and none for the other 2 and still have a high rebate. The council are still on this very old fashioned way of working out your rebate.
Persevere and keep at them, i hope i have been of some kind of help

Tracyx

The council have now issued a final notice for the otustandign council tax, and have threatened sherif action, the outstanding blance is due to there overpayment by there fault,

1st do i need to pay it or can i stand my ground due to its tehre fault?
2nd if i paid it can i claim it back after the appeal goes through
3rd they have had the apeal for more than there 28 days now so are they breaching any laws by not replying in some form?

Hello Andrew, I have been fighting over a housing benefit overpayment now for 2 years. I also had bailiffs round for the council tax element and did have to pay it, I have also been paying a proportion of my housing benefit back to the benefits service whilst all the hearings go through. This leaves a shortfall in my rent and I was advised to approach the benefits service for a discretionary payment to cover the shortfall.

My counterclaim went to Appeal and they ruled that I could have "reasonably been expected" to notice the error and that the onus is on the claimant even though it is a local authority error. I am self employed and had been claiming maternity allowance when I had my baby. Despite supplying them with all my accounting records and tax returns etc. and telling them how long my maternity allowance was for and that my income would return to the calculations prior to giving birth they continued basing my payments on maternity allowance. They admitted this error but said I had still been overpaid as they did not take previous years losses into consideration. I am now facing a £5000 repayment bill despite having had no money and all otehr benefits services recognising that previous years losses create no income in following years that do have profit. These include Inland Revenue, Tax Credits and Legal Aid. It is a loop hole for the Benefits Service whose guidelines are not in-keeping with other means tested benefit guidelines. By refusing to acknowledge pervious years losses they do not recognise nil income which means a shortfall in my rent, a large bill and potential homelessness.

There is no way I could have known that the Benefits Service guidelines fell out of sync with legal aids and tax credit or that they missed this when I had given them the figures for previous and current years.

My case has now gone onto an independant tribunal as my Solicitors have argued that the "reasonable expectation" was subjective NOT objective and that this is "An Error In Law" Who knows what will happen - I feel this is now in the hands of a tangled bureaucratic paper-swapping system that has little to do with the fact that I did or didnt have any money to cover rent and entitlement. However, if you are low income then you may get legal aid and someone else to sift through the mountains of notices that benefits services send you - often wrong and always in duplicate or triplicate making it very difficult to understand even with a legal background. I have been prejudiced against for having shown initiative and intelligence but I felt confused and drowning in the sheer volume of communication that often contradicted from the Hackney Benefit Service. Perhaps if you are able to prove your illness and reading difficulties it might save you. GOOD LUCK! it is a minefield and I do feel Solicitors might drag it out but do act as a bit of a sound board so you don't have to deal with endless call centres!