Offering Help!

Icemoose wrote:

If I can help in anyway on the board feel free to contact me as I have lost of experience in HB and CTB as a trained Assessment Officer!

Thanks Icemoose I'm sure that will be helpful to a lot of people.

People offering help on this forum.

Tax Credits - jamiebraund

I know quite a lot about Incapacity Benefit (but not in a professional capacity), so can usually at least point people in the right direction, even if I don't know the answer.

I am also qualified in Town Planning.

Hi,

Let's see if I can be of assistance as I work for a Housing Association recovering debt and deal with benefits a lot.

1) Housing Benefit should have advised your sister in writing that there has been an overpayment on the account and the reason why and that her benefit is being reduced by £x amount each week to recover the debt. The letter also advises that she is given 28 days to appeal against this overpayment.

She needs to find out why the overpayment has occured. It can be something as simple as not responding to a letter requesting more information from her, or it could be simply a mistake. Whatever the case she needs to get to the bottom of it. She will need to go to the HB office to find out what has caused the problem, her Housing Officer would probably not know.

2) Has she ever claimed HB before? It may be that she has an overpayment from them in the past that is being recovered now as well, which they are perfectly entitled to do.

3) Regarding the arrears on the rent account, £500 is a lot to be in arrears by for a few months. Was her rent account fully up to date before she went onto benefits as this could account for some of her arrears. Also, she will need to make sure that benefits have paid in full from the correct date, for this she will probably need a rent statement. We send them out every three months and are able to provide a print of the account at any time we are asked so can trace where an account starts to go wrong. For someone to say she has to take their word for it isn't satisfactory. Speak to someone else, or make an appointment with someone at the housing office to go into it in detail.

4) Query with the Housing Officer why it has taken so long for them to notify her that she in arrears on her rent account. They are supposed to contact the tenant as soon as possible and if it has taken until the account is over £500 in arrears that suggests that they aren't keeping an eye on things.

5) With regards to court action, as of 2nd October 2006 there is a legal protocol that has to be followed for all Social Landlords to follow. Failure to do so could result in the case being thrown out of court. It may be worth googling this to see if it applies to council properties, but I think it does. There is usually a period of 3 months before we get cases into court following discovery of arrears on it (and that is finding them at one week's rent outstanding). Also a Notice Seeking Possession has to be served before court action can begin. I am presuming there has been only this phone call to your sister and that is the first she knew about it or has more been happening that you haven't said?

6) If the overpayment is legitimate and there is nothing she can do about it, as she is on a low income she can ask for the recovery rate to be reduced to a more managable amount. The £12 that she is being asked to pay now is the £8 overpayment plus £4 pw off the arrears. The £4 is also negotiable with the housing department - the minimum we accept at the moment is £2.90 p/w.

Lastly, she cannot ignore this! That level of arrears is quite serious and she needs to get to the bottom of it. Tell her to go the Council to get an appointment with HB to find out where it has gone wrong and then speak to the housing officer to let them know what is happening. She must keep them informed of what is going on - just because they are both council doesn't mean to say they talk to each other about cases.

Hope that helped and made sense (and sorry it is so long!!!). Based on what we do (or did as I am off work sick and things keep changing) it is correct to the best of my knowledge but others may make additional suggestions or correct me!

Karen
x

Thanks! I have been a lurker for a while and don't tend to post anywhere much but when I do they can get longwinded!!!!

Zingara thank you so much for your post. To the best of my knowledge she was fully paid up rent wise before she lost her job, and the only other letter she has had from them was a review form to fill in to state that her circumstances hadn't changed since she first claimed. She returned the form right away and still has the receipt to prove it. Up until the letter she received yesterday she has had absolutely no notification of any arrears and presumed everything was being covered by HB

She has claimed hb in the past, but only for a very short period of time (less than 3 months) and she notified them as soon as she returned to work, her claim hadn't even been finalised by the time she got a new job so I wouldn't have thought the overpayment came from there.

MDF_Goblin, my sis is genuinely at a loss as how this has happened, I think that the attitude she got when she phoned up yesterday was due to it being Friday afternoon and the person she was speaking to couldn't be bothered to help :mad: