Housing Benefit Decision Letters

Award letters

You will be sent a Housing Benefit decision letter for each of your tenants that we pay directly to you. this letter will show:

  • The date the benefit started
  • The weekly amount we will pay
  • The date the first payment will be made
  • The date benefit has stopped but there is no overpayment

Overpayment letters

These will be sent to you if we have paid more benefit than the tenant is entitled to. Overpayment letters will give you the following information:

  • The dates the overpayment covers
  • The weekly amount of benefit you were paid
  • The weekly amount of benefit you should have had
  • The weekly amount overpaid
  • The number of weeks you were overpaid for
  • The total amount you were overpaid
  • The reason for the overpayment
  • Whether the overpayment is recoverable from you

We will not recover the overpayment from you if we have investigated the cause of the overpayment and decided that your tenant has committed benefit fraud. In all other circumstances we will usually recover the overpayment from you.

If the tenant continues to receive Housing Benefit we will recover the overpayment from the new award. It will be recovered at a rate of £9.15 per week, unless the overpayment was classified as fraudulent, in which case the recovery rate will be £12.00 per week. The rate will also increase if the tenant has any disregarded income, We can add half the amount of the disregard to the above figures.

We can also recover an overpayment made to you for one tenant from another tenant whom we are paying to you. If we do this we will notify both you and the "blameless tenant". You cannot recover this amount from the "blameless tenant".

If the tenant no longer receives Housing Benefit we will send you an invoice with instructions on how to repay. When you receive the invoice please contact the Overpayments section to arrange repayment.

If you ignore the invoice we will send you reminders, if you ignore these we can refer the debt for County Court Action. This will result in you owing both the debt and legal costs.

IT IS IN YOUR INTEREST TO CONTACT THE OVERPAYMENTS SECTION IMMEDIATELY TO AVOID THESE EXTRA COSTS.

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