Housing Benefit Overpayments

A Housing Benefit overpayment is when you are paid more benefit than you are entitled to. This can happen if your claim does not accurately reflect all of your circumstances, or if your circumstances change and you do not let us know right away.

You will normally need to pay back the overpayment, so it's important that you check that we have the correct information about your personal circumstances (as listed on the decision notices sent to you).

If you require more detailed information about how we have calculated your benefit, please contact us to request a 'statement of reasons'.

Contact the Benefits Team right away, in writing (by letter or email), if:

• your circumstances change - please  ​​​​​​​use this form to notify us of a change [792KB]
• anything appears incorrect on your decision notice
• you would like us to send you a statement of reasons

We may need to amend the amount of benefit you are entitled to. If this results in an overpayment of Housing Benefit we will write to you.

If you are also claiming Council Tax Reduction, the amount of Council Tax you pay may also be affected.

If you receive an overpayment

If you have received an overpayment of Housing Benefit, we will write to you and explain:

• the amount of overpayment
• the period for which you have been overpaid
• the reasons for the overpayment
• how we propose to recover the overpayment
• your appeal rights, should you disagree with the overpayment
   

How to make a repayment

If you need to pay back an overpayment, we will normally not take steps to recover until at least one month has passed following the calculation of the overpayment. This is to provide you with the opportunity to ask us to reconsider our decision, should you disagree or believe that an error has been made.

The steps we take to recover an overpayment will depend on which of the following list of priorities apply to your Housing Benefit claim and would clear the overpayment balance:

1. the overpayment will be offset from any underpayment due to be paid to you (an underpayment is a credit relating to a past period, for which some level of payment has already been issued - this happens where there is increased entitlement to Housing Benefit for a previous period)
2. any remaining overpayment will be deducted (at a rate we will notify you of) from ongoing/future payments of Housing Benefit as they become payable; this is known as a 'clawback' of benefit
3. if you have no further entitlement to Housing Benefit, you will be sent an invoice for the overpaid amount - the invoice will include repayment information and contact details to make an arrangement
4. following the issue of an invoice, if you do not repay the overpayment or adhere to any arrangement you have made with us to repay, we can take steps to recover a remaining balance as a clawback from some types of benefits claimed from the Department for Work and Pensions, or by attachment of earnings