Letter from Council RE: Housing Benefit...advice?

gazjam

Hi,
major worry and panic here.

Im on Jobseekers Allowance and in full receipt of Housing Benefit.
Currenting renting property from Council, been here 6 years.

Got a letter Friday there "NOTIFACATION OF SCHEDULE RECOVERY" for overpayment of housing benefit of £197.61
(I quote)
=====================================
As previosuly advised you have an overpayment of HB of £197.61. You were orrigianlly issued with a debtors account to recover this overpayment, however, it has now been decided to recover the remailing overpayment from your ongoing benefit. Therefore, I have cancelled your Debtor's Account and have set up a Sheduled Recovery of £11.05 a week from your weekely Housing Benefit payment.
Your current HB entitlement is £55.40 per week from which we will deduct £11.05 per week. This decision is effective from £11/04/11.

Your weekely rent is: £55.40
Your adjusted benefit is@ £44.35
Your new weekly rent to pay is: £11.05

If you wish to clear your overpayment sooner or increase your schedule recovery ammount please contact the office above.

=====================================
Panic!

First of all, this Overpayment was for a period of time I was out of the Country for 3 weeks and had to sign off benefit at the job centre.
It took a week to process my claim, so a 4 week period had passed from the Council's point of view.

Can this overpayment be refuted?
Does it matter if I was out of the country or does this not matter and I am liable for rent of the property anyway.

I am more than happy to make a "promise to pay" for when I hopefully get employment soon (I am an Honours graduate ex Civil Engineer, not and not a workshy person), but what can I do when this is just thrust upon me like this?
Please help, any advice would be great.

I can hardly get by on my benefit as is..Im scraping by on the money the governement says is the minimum I need to live on.
I cannot afford to lose £22.10 off each benefit payment each fortnight.
Its keep my house in leccy(barely) and eat with no money spare as is...
One of those will have to be reduced to pay this.

Can the Council just decide to do this on a whim?
Whilst its not a case of the Council taking money directly from my benefit, it is exactly that in a roundabout way...

Is there any legal standing to say they cannot do this as it would impact my Benefit if I had to pay this "low priority" debt?
I appreciate the Council is entitled to get their money back and I am not backing away from that responsibility, but to just go ahead and do this...seems a bit wrong?

I get housing benefit as the Gov. decided I do not have enough income to pay it...surely this payment is less priority than food/ electricity travel to job interviews etc?

Its unfair and a bit underhand if you ask me.

Any advice please?
I'm going to speak to a Housing Manager about this later in the week, and would be good to know how I stand on this.

Thanks.

gazjam

PART TWO

A couple of days after receiving that first letter I recieved a baffling form from the Council..any help to understand whats going on and how it is connected to the previous letter would be really helpful.

Its a "Credit Note against an invoice".
The reference nummber relates to the ref no. on the original letter.

(Quote)
===================================
Credit of Invoice xxxxxxx
Credit note raised to cancel invoice as balance to be recovered from award of housing benefit under claim ref: xxxxx(same as original letter)

Ammount: £-197.61
(yes.. a minus figure)

PLEASE READ THIS INFORMATION
This Credit Note has been raised against a previously outstanding invoice.
===================================

I am none the wiser what the situation is after receiving this, in fact I am more confused!
Is this "credit note" just a paper excercise to clear the way for this deduction from housing benefit they have began?

Why a credit note with a minus figure?
That would mean crediting you with a withdrawal??? *confused*

I wonder if this is just a paper excercise also because the thing is bizarrly dated...perhaps to make it null and void or something?
Its dated 30/12/1899 (eighteen ninty nine)

This all feels a bit fishy to me.

Any advice much appreciated.


thanks.

HappyMJ

They seem to be moving the debt from one department to another. Strange...I'm assuming you can't pay the £11.05 per week so it will accrue as arrears. It'll take 18 weeks for the entire amount to accrue but you won't be in enough debt to be evicted so you could just leave it and wait till you get a job to pay the arrears back.

gazjam

Thanks for that.
My initial thoughts were to make in good faith a "promise to pay" when I had a job and leave it at that.

If they get a bit mardy about it I wondered what could they actually DO, other than accrue "arrears"?
It does seem to be transferring from one dept to another, or at least CALLING the debt something else?

I just wonder if by moving the debt they are allowing themselves more power over collection or something, my worst fear (of course) being eviction.

You say there isn't enough debt to be evicted?
Could you expand on that a little bit thanks?

HappyMJ

gazjam wrote: »

Thanks for that.
My initial thoughts were to make in good faith a "promise to pay" when I had a job and leave it at that.

If they get a bit mardy about it I wondered what could they actually DO, other than accrue "arrears"?
It does seem to be transferring from one dept to another, or at least CALLING the debt something else?

I just wonder if by moving the debt they are allowing themselves more power over collection or something, my worst fear (of course) being eviction.

You say there isn't enough debt to be evicted?
Could you expand on that a little bit thanks?

A private landlord can evict on any arrears but they need to issue the notices correctly and giving you 2 months to leave. A social landlord won't issue eviction proceedings until you are more than 2 months in arrears. You won't get to that but it does reduce your leeway in the future so I'd get the arrears cleared as soon as you can.

BitterAndTwisted

Get in touch with your Council's rent-collection peeps. They know you're on JSA and cannot possibly afford £11 a week from what you are receiving in benefits right now. Make an arrangement to pay something. Most housing department people are used to folk in your position and the very worst thing you can do is ignore the situation. Most of them will agree to you paying a very low amount but they have to be seen to be getting their rent-arrears backlog down, even if it's only by two pounds or week or something. I was in the exactly the same situation as you are now some time back, they were very decent about it and they agreed to my paying off the arrears at three pounds a week.

It's not the Council's fault that you failed to qualify for housing benefit when you signed off JSA to go abroad. You still had the tenancy so the full rent fell due. I'm surprised that you didn't realise that when you withdrew your claim. Any private landlord wouldn't have waived your rent, so neither would the Council.

Fly_Baby

I am not really in a position to give advice on benefits but it seems strange that a capable person with a degree should struggle due to the shortfall worth £11 per week. It is a couple of hours of babysitting/house cleaning/sales assistant job. Are you really better off at JSA?

Again, sorry if my view is out of place here.

gazjam

Fly_Baby wrote: »

I am not really in a position to give advice on benefits but it seems strange that a capable person with a degree should struggle due to the shortfall worth £11 per week. It is a couple of hours of babysitting/house cleaning/sales assistant job. Are you really better off at JSA?

Again, sorry if my view is out of place here.

No probs.
It's about numbers.
The struggle comes from this: Receiving £62 per week and losing £11 of that.
I'm not choosing to be on JSA.

BitterAndTwisted

It's not easy to combine work and claiming JSA: for every pound earned in wages a pound is deducted from the JSA and the claimant still has to fund their fares out of what is left. Work a minute over 16 hours in a week and you lose all of your entitlement and then the housing benefit and C Tax benefit ends as well. Never mind the distinct possibility of the JobCentre in messing up the claim. Mine was suspended for over two months because I worked and declared it because I didn't fill in all of the necessary forms and no-one told me.