CSA overpayment?

clairebear7_2

Briefly, I was overpaid CSA money that should have gone to the secretary of state because I was on income support. This was dealt with by the DWP claiming an overpayment of income support because of the CSA money, stating it was a wholly innocent mistake but still had to be repaid. They then agreed to waive it on health grounds, and I have a letter from the parliamentary under secretary that says they will not try to recover the money again.

Now the CSA is saying I have to pay back what is effectively the same money - that they paid it to me instead of the secretary of state (for DWP) and now they will deduct money from what they pay me to pay the overpayment back.

How can they do this? If I paid back all the money they have both claimed it would come to far more than I ever had in the first place!
It is making me ill with stress and to make things worse, I can't seem to get any advice to help as no one will touch CSA problems because it is not a welfare benefit.

Does anyone have any experience of this? And advice would be helpful, thanks.

kelloggs36

Income support are not recovering the overpayment, so the CSA are - you have been overpaid and the Secretary of State needs to be reimbursed.

You can always try and appeal.

clairebear7_2

kelloggs36 wrote: »

You can always try and appeal.

Appeal against what?
I have a letter which says I have been overpaid. It then details a whole host of their other maladministrations, for which they paid me £50 compensation.
There are no other details - nothing about appealing, or how it will be repaid. The case worker I spoke to said it was up to her, and she would speak to my ex about this months payment 'if she felt like it.'

markeymark

if it's an overpayment surely you must have noticed this at the time?

can't see you have any right of appeal on this

clairebear7_2

markeymark wrote: »

if it's an overpayment surely you must have noticed this at the time?

I had no idea.

dizzydusty

Hi, can I just clarify something,

At the time of the overpayment, was your income support automatically reduced by the amount of maintenance (less any disregard) you would NORMALLY receive? (only ask as I didn't think CSA would reduce maintenance payable to you before you got it - usually it was income support that did this.)

Once the CSA paid out the monthly payment I would say that was their duty discharged for that month - that is they collected and paid out the necessary assessed amount - the problem occurrs as the Sec of State appears not to have received their portion of this monthly payment. So the overpayment is of income support, not child maintenance.

From what you say the income support overpayment is not recoverable as it has probably been regarded as official error. If income support has made this ruling, then they will have recorded this decison. Once an overpayment is recorded as written off, then they cannot approach you again to recover.

What the CSA need to realise (and I think it is just the person you spoke to who doesn't understand) is that it is not an overpayment of child maintenance you have, it is an overpayment of income support - your actual maintenance assessment and the money collected was not a mistake. It was how the CSA apportioned the payment to you and to the Sec of State that was the problem.

I suspect that the overpayment of Income Support has not been correctly recorded and it is appearing on a schedule somewhere within the CSA. Ask the CSA caseworker to show how your maintenance was actually overpaid, for that to happen the CSA would have to have collected too much from the NRP, or done some kind of reassessment that then went on to reduce your maintenance assessment. Just because they pay a bit to you that should have gone to the Sec of State is not an overpayment of maintenance.

Hope this helps.

Dizzy

Lil2002

While in receipt of income support, there were choices.
You could tell the job centre how much child support you were receiving, and they would deduct that amount from your benefit.
Otherwise, you would be entitled to keep the first £10 until October '08 without it affecting your benefit and that would be the amount that the CSA would pay you.

What I'm understanding is that you had all of your benefit, plus all of your child support. Is that right?

If that is so, than there has been an overpayment of child support. It would be recovered by reducing any current maintenance, and there is no appeal against that since a recent change in legislation.

Bottom line - did you get all the money?

clairebear7_2

I know there was an overpayment - that has been dealt with by overpayment proceedings with the DWP.
Dizzy's post was really helpful and explained it much clearer than I could!
I can sort it now.

shell_542

Unfortunately though, when it comes to overpayments, the CSA don't normally care who's fault it was and they do demand the money. If they let overpayments go because of their errors every time, then I would imagine that there would be ALOT of NRP's not paying some of their maintenance. But even if the CSA have made an error, and the NRP ends up with thousands of pounds worth of overpayments that they cannot afford, the CSA don't care and want the money. So the same would apply for a PWC.

What did the CSA say when you told them about the letter from the secretary of state?

dizzydusty

Hi,

The important thing in this case is what actually was overpaid.

As I mentioned before, from what the op has said the maintenance collected by the CSA was correct, it was how they apportioned it to the Sec of State and the PWC that appears to be wrong.

e.g the weekly assessment against the NRP is for arguments sake £20, with £10 of that going to the Sec of State and £10 to the PWC. What appears to have happened is that the £20 (remember this is purely a figure I made up for this explination) went to the PWC and none to the Sec of State. This then means that the PWC has had an extra £10 that, had they realised had been paid, would have affected the income support, and reduced this by the extra £10 maintenance they received.

The overpayment has occurred because the £10 extra the PWC received was not taken into account. Therefore the overpayment is of income support not child maintenance as the correct amount was taken from the NRP. It is then for the Income Support bods to decide whether or not the overpayment that has occurred is recoverable from the PWC or not. There are various reasons why an overpayment is not recoverable and official error is one of them. In this case the op has a letter stating the overpayment is not recoverable. The CSA have no capacity (in my opinion) to recover the overpayment as it was not the maintenance that was overpaid, I doubt very much that the CSA have the time or resource to identify income support overpayments and take the action on them!

How you make the CSA see sense I don't know as I have yet to mange it in all of the years I have dealt with them. I would start by asking them to show (in writing of course) how the overpayment they alledg happened.

Best of luck.