The term overpayment relates to Housing Benefit and Excess Benefit relates to Council Tax Benefit. However the rules are the same and therefore the term overpayment is used to refer to both on this page. Benefit refers to either Housing Benefit and/or Council Tax Benefit.
What is an overpayment?
An overpayment occurs when benefit is paid and there is no longer an entitlement to it, or your circumstances change so you are no longer entitled to the same amount of benefit that you were receiving.
How can I stop an overpayment occurring?
You must tell us of any change that will affect your benefit entitlement. You must tell us as soon as you can.
Examples of changes that could cause an overpayment are:
- Increase in any capital
- Increase of any income that you receive
- A person moves into or out of your property
- You move from the property
- Your Income Support, Jobseekers Allowance or Employment and Support Allowance stops
- Your rent changes
- Your non-dependant has a change to their income
- You no longer receive child benefit for your child/children
This is by no means a complete list of changes, so if you are unsure if your change in circumstances will create an overpayment please tell us straight away.
How do you work out the amount of my recoverable overpayment?
The amount of a recoverable overpayment is the:
- The amount of benefit actually paid over the period of the overpayment; LESS
- Any amount of benefit that should have been paid over part or all of the same period.
We will write to you if we need information to work out the benefit you should have been paid. You have one month from the date of our letter to provide the information we need. If you do not provide the information we need we will recover the full amount of benefit paid for the overpayment period.
Will you recover the overpayment?
We can recover all overpayments, except certain cases due to official error. However, an official error overpayment can be recovered if:
- You, or someone acting on your behalf, or the person receiving the payment, could reasonably have been expected to realise that an overpayment was taking place at the time of payment or upon receipt of any notification relating to the payment.
How will I be asked to repay the overpaid amount?
If you still have an entitlement to Housing Benefit, repayment will be made from your ongoing benefit entitlement until the full amount is recovered. If the repayment amount causes you hardship you can ask for it to be reduced. However, you will have to provide details of your income and expenditure in order to see if we will agree to the reduced amount.
If you are no longer entitled to Housing Benefit we may;
- send an invoice for the overpaid amount, or
- recover a weekly amount from any welfare benefits you receive
Any Council Tax Benefit overpayment (excess benefit) will be added to your Council Tax account and a revised bill will be sent to you.
