Council Tax Benefit Overpayments (Excess Benefit)

These occur when a person is paid more benefit than they should have been paid or paid when they were not entitled. Here are some examples of how overpayments occur:

• Your Income Support or Job Seekers Allowance stops
• Your income or capital increases
• Someone moves into your property
• You move out of a property
• The type of income or benefit you receive increases or changes

How Can I Stop Overpayments Occurring

You should tell the benefits service straightaway when your circumstances change.

When you receive a decision letter telling you how your benefit is calculated you should check the information carefully in case an error has been made. If any of the information is wrong you should contact us immediately.

What Happens When Benefit Is Overpaid.

Any overpaid benefit (called excess benefit for Council Tax) is added to your Council Tax Account. A new bill, together with any revised payment details will then be sent to you.

A benefit decision letter will also be sent to you showing the following

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

If the Benefits Service has made a mistake we can still ask you to repay the overpayment if we think you should have known about the mistake and did not tell us. This is why you should carefully check all details of the decision letters sent to you.

Getting The Overpayment Reduced

In certain circumstances we may be able to reduce the amount of an overpayment you have to pay back. If we can work out what benefit you would have been entitled to if we had known your correct circumstances at the time of the overpayment, the overpayment may be reduced. This is called UNDERLYING ENTITLEMENT.

If we are able to do this, and do not already have the full details needed, we will write to you for the details. These must provided within 1 month of our request. If the details are not received within this time the full overpayment(excess benefit) will be recoved from you.