Housing Benefit overpayment please help

kibs

Hi, I'm hoping someone can help.
Basically I work parttime and have children. A few months ago there was a change in circumstances, and I am positive I informed HB, unfortunatly I cannot find the recipt which I am kicking myself about.

Today I have recieved a letter stating an overpayment of just over £500. THe problem is that HB have decieded to put this onto my council tax bill. Last week I owed CT just over £100, the balance to be paid between now and February. Every month I have been paying CT the amount that I believed to by right and was upto date with my payments. Now my payments have shot up to over £100 a month. I dont know what to do.

If they had put this onto my rent, which has also gone up over £200 a month, it wouldn't have been as bad as I could have made arrangements with my ll about the arrears.

Can they do that? Dump all the debt onto CT knowing that between rent and CT they are taking half my wages every month? I am really scared that because of this I am now going to end up in prison because I simply cannot afford what they are asking.

I have no credit cards. I have noone to ask to lend me the money. I have looked at all areas that I can make cutbacks, but there is no more to cutback on.

I am not asking to get it written off, just if and how it can be transfered to either my rent account or to pay HB back directly with a more affordable payment plan.

THanks for reading.

LL30

How can they transfer it to your CT account? Sounds dodgy to me! I get part housing benefit and had an overpayment earlier this year (courtesy of the fact that they wouldn't accept that my child needed to go to nursery before I started work so that she could settle in - grr!) They have slowly taken the overpayment back by decreasing the amount they contribute weekly to my rent, which isn't too much of a pain and manageable. Usually, I've found them very amenable to discussing any problems, although I appreciate that this will change from council to council. If I was you, I'd ring up and query what's going on. explain that you can't afford the current repayment system and that you're unsure as to whether it's a council tax bill you're in arrears with, or whether there's been an issue with a rent overpayment - put's the ball in their court to explain.

I'm quite sure they cannot mix and match the two accounts, they're totally separate issues. Try not to panic xx