Housing benefit overpayments

[izzyheskint]

I wrote this letter in reply to a Demand for £1,853 over payment of housing benefit. Comments welcom

Housing benefit blunder so once again poor people on low incomes are subjected to the effects of beurocratic blunders with far reaching consequences for there all ready stretched finances


Should I have known that an over payment was made ?
You inform that you have made a mistake 23 months after the mistake was made
Am I psychic? No the onus was with you not me I trusted you with the information I supplied you. To make the correct calculations and decisions with the information you requested, to work out my housing benefit claim,
As this is the service that you offer and require me to use should I wish to claim housing or council tax benefit?

As I am a gardener and not employed by Powys county council, I would not know where to start when it comes to working out housing and council tax benefit, or working tax credit,
And where do you imagine I can get that amount of money from when the reason I claimed benefit was because of low earnings

I shall of course contact my MP raising this issue with him and endeavour to find out how many claims this involves or is this isolated mistake
with what I can only describe as a shoddy and totally inept service that treats people like this

I totally disagree with your letter suggesting that I should have been aware or able to somehow know, that an over payment had been made by you.
Please find attached DMA01
And in disputing this I also dispute that I should have to make a repayment

[happyolddog]

Hi Izzy,
I found myself in a similar situation last year, they were asking for the payments back even though they were in receipt of all of the fact of my pay etc. I tried to resolve their mistake and made an offer of £5 per month. They asked for £10. I agreed and set up an agreement that this would be taken from future benefits. That was done then only last week they wrote to me sating that they had made a mistake and they owed me money.Thay are so bloody incompitant at the B A.I accepted the money and told them that I don't want to claim the benefit anymore.
I hope things go well for you and don't let them push you about!

Kind regards. happyolddog.

[izzyheskint]

Thanks happyolddog
I sent the letter on the 20th December i should have a reply soon

[redsonja]

Hi Izzy,

If you have good grounds, there is a proper appeal procedure in place for overpayment of Housing Benefit. Their letter to you should explain your rights on all this..

i.e. 1. Appeal in writing against the overpayment and state why you should not be expected to pay it back.

If your appeal is turned down then the next stage is an appeal tribunal where an independant committee look at all the facts and then decide whether to find in your favour.

Did you receive info on this?

[the green bowl]

Izzy -

I'm a housing benefits assessor myself, perhaps I can help?

The no. 1 rule for benefit claimants is - CHECK YOUR NOTIFICATIONS.

Whenever a decision is made, you will be notified of:

a. Your weekly entitlement and
b. The way your benefit has been calculated

Now although you could not be expected to know how the calculation works (it's not actually that difficult, I can explain the procedure if you like) the notifications should clearly state what figures the council use when assessing your income.

Now mistakes DO happen - regardless of what the public may think, benefits staff are not sipping tea all day, we are almost constantly overwhelmed by the flow of information, my office for example has one roughly one member of staff for every 500 claimants. Please remember that this is like a contract you are entering into, we try our best to reduce errors but in some respects they are inevitable. Thats why we ask you (and you will have been told this on your letters) to check our figures and tell us if they are wrong.

Your notification letters will have shown the exact figures we've used for your income, if you were earning £100 per week but your notifications said you were earning £50 per week then I'm afraid it's YOUR responsibility to check those notifications and tell the council immediately if our figures are incorrect. Thats the reason notification letters are sent. This is clearly a very important part of people's lives so it's not unreasonable to ask that people take at least some responsibility when benefits are concerned.

I hope you don't feel that I'm being overly antagonstic but writing to people like me and telling them that they're inept, morons etc. is not going to help matters.

If you could confirm the specifics of the case - eg. state what aspect of your circumstances the council got wrong - then perhaps I could help advise you better.

As another poster said, as long as you are still receiving housing benefit, the council will not demand that you pay back all the money straight away, they will normally deduct the money from your ongoing benefit payments. This can be anything between £5 per week and £20 per week, depending on your circumstances.

If you feel that the council are deducting too much you can ask that they lower the deduction amounts.

If you have stopped receiving benefits, contact the council's income management section to arrange a payment schedule.

If you can be more specific about the nature of the overpayment I could advise you better.