Overpayment of Housing and/or Council Tax Benefit

If you have been overpaid Housing or Council Tax Benefit, for example because you have started work, we will notify you by letter and send you an invoice for the Housing Benefit element of your overpayment.

The Council Tax element of your overpayment will usually be added to your Council Tax bill.

You can pay this invoice in a variety of ways. If you still have a benefit entitlement we can recover the overpayment back from you by reducing the amount of benefit you receive.

If you are no longer entitled to benefit, you can pay the invoice by cash, cheque, over the internet, at the bank or post office, or by credit/debit card. If you cannot afford to pay the invoice in one go, you must contact us and we may make an arrangement for you to pay by installments. If you do not pay according to the agreement this option will be withdrawn.

If you have not paid the invoice, or made contact with the overpayments section after 21 days, a second reminder invoice will be sent to you. If we do not hear from you after a further 14 days, a Final Notice of your debt will be sent to you. If we then hear nothing and receive no payment we will instruct our Solicitors and consider court action.

If after a month we still have not heard from you, the matter is passed on to a Debt Recovery Agency, who we have authorised to carry out doorstep recovery on our behalf.

Click here to download a leaflet on overpayments.

If you are a private tenant and we have paid your benefit directly to your Landlord, we may attempt to recover from them. However it is more likely that we will attempt to recover any overpayment from you, and you should make arrangements with your landlord for adjustment of your rent account.

This page was last updated on 2 January 2009