Housing Benefit Overpayment

[moandcubs]

Received a letter on Friday from Glasgow City Council stating that due to information received from HMRC I have been overpaid HB by just under £2000 for various periods between March 2013 and now.

 

In that period of time I have moved house twice and also had a cut in child tax credits which means that I have provided 3 monthly payslips 3 different times for them to work out my average wage and pay housing benefit.

 

They now say that any overtime I have worked I should have been informing them. I barely do any overtime and assumed that as some of the payslips I had provided contained overtime on them this was why they said they worked my average wage out.

 

I have 76 pages of new calculations to look through and see if they are right or wrong and I am sitting worrying about how we will get by.

 

They have also stopped my housing benefit because my latest payslip shows I am earning too much to be entitled but this is only because the company I work for took so long to negotiate our annual pay rise for April that I had basically 6 months backdated pay in the one month.

 

Really don't know where to start with all of this and any advice would be greatly appreciated

[caro]

Have you got all your payslips for the period in question or at least your P60's for the relevant years and payslips for this tax year? Also tax credit notices so that you can work out your income to prove what you've had for the period in question.

[moandcubs]

Yeah I get all my payslips online so have them and P60's for that period. If I don't have tax credit notices I can use Internet banking to check the payments made.

 

But if they are saying the info has come from HMRC and from the looks of things have basically turned each calculation into a 4 week period for each pay - why bother asking people for 3 payslips to work out an average and then hit them with this?

[moandcubs]

One bit I did notice from reading the Government guidelines was that a council couldn't recover an overpayment due to official error. When we moved house April 2014 and made a new claim - for some bizarre reason they sent our awards notice to the old address. This only came to light when they asked for payslips in March this year when our Child Tax Credits went down and they wanted to check it wasn't due to my income.

 

So am I right in saying that for that period I had no way of knowing how the award had been calculated due to official error of sending the notice to the wrong address therefore they can't claim any of the overpayment for then?

[caro]

I know what you're saying about the error issue. I'm sure someone more knowledgeable than me will be able to give more info shortly.

[id6052]

One bit I did notice from reading the Government guidelines was that a council couldn't recover an overpayment due to official error. When we moved house April 2014 and made a new claim - for some bizarre reason they sent our awards notice to the old address. This only came to light when they asked for payslips in March this year when our Child Tax Credits went down and they wanted to check it wasn't due to my income.

 

So am I right in saying that for that period I had no way of knowing how the award had been calculated due to official error of sending the notice to the wrong address therefore they can't claim any of the overpayment for then?

 

No, sending the notice to wrong address did not cause the overpayment, so it would still be recoverable

[moandcubs]

No, sending the notice to wrong address did not cause the overpayment, so it would still be recoverable

 

This is the part I read in the government guidelines that made me think it could be. I had no way of knowing how they had calculated my entitlement for that period between April 2014 and March 2015 as I did not receive a notice due to it being sent to wrong address.

 

I was given the understanding that an average of my wage had been worked out which did include some overtime in the calculation. Therefore I had no reason to believe I was being overpaid and had nothing to work out if I was or not

 

"2.139 Could the claimant, a person acting on their behalf or the person to whom the benefit was paid,

reasonably have been expected to realise they were being overpaid, either at the time of the official

error overpayment or any notice relating to the payments that were made?

If the answer to this question is yes, then the HB or CTB overpayment is legally recoverable.

If the answer to this question is no, then the overpayment is non-recoverable. It must be written off."

[Shoelover]

That only applies if the error is theirs. If you didn't inform them of the overtime then the o/p would be customer error

[moandcubs]

That only applies if the error is theirs. If you didn't inform them of the overtime then the o/p would be customer error

 

But the initial calculation for my average wage included some overtime in it. So without the notice I had no idea of how much overtime pushed me over the average earnings they had calculated. The same can be said for a couple of months where I lost a few days pay as I used a company policy to take some days leave unpaid yet they haven't stated they underpaid me in those weeks

[Shoelover]

Because if you didn't report the nil pay it will count as a late beneficial change