Bedroom Tax Loophole Claim in Progress

cattermole

MP's can contact the council direct and often do.

Just draft a letter or email to MP stating you feel you have been given the wrong information by the Council and refer to the fact they should not be giving you a deadline.

airliner

On a side issue, if you have been receiving discretionary housing payments to help meet the costs of the bedroom tax you may have to pay these back as some councils will say they have been paid in error.
The amount of DHPs received will reduce whatever refund is credited into your rent account.

cattermole

airliner wrote: »

On a side issue, if you have been receiving discretionary housing payments to help meet the costs of the bedroom tax you may have to pay these back as some councils will say they have been paid in error.
The amount of DHPs received will reduce whatever refund is credited into your rent account.

Sorry this is incorrect they have no powers of recovery for DHP at the moment. They will have to refund without taking DHP Payments into account.

airliner

cattermole wrote: »

Sorry this is incorrect they have no powers of recovery for DHP at the moment. They will have to refund without taking DHP Payments into account.

Our local authority have taken the approach of recovering DHPs in this manner.
We, as a welfare rights department, have challenged the recovery and we still await an outcome.

It is worth knowing for those who may be affected in a similar way.

cattermole

Interesting! I Challenged with who?

Sorry editing post as was on phone before.

So your challenging your LA's decision as the Welfare Rights department?

There are no regs in the Social Security law for them to do it is my understanding so you are right to challenge them!

I do think they will close the loophole but it will require a reg to be put in somewhere.

At the moment I know it has been looked at by QC's and they couldn't find any powers for them to do it. Unless it was a voluntary agreement entered into by the party involved.

iluvmarmite

I don't really get why they can't recover any DHP they've paid to affected tenants, say a tenant had to pay £14 a week for the reduction, they got £5 a week DHP leaving them £9 a week to pay, then they found out they qualify for the 1996 rule, would they expect to get refunded the whole £14 a week from last April because that's how much they should have paid, or would they expect to be refunded the £9 a week as that's what they did pay?

I personally think they should get the £9 a week refunded and HB keep the other £5 as it was them who paid it, if you understand what I mean. If the HB paid the full amount in DHP then the tenant really shouldn't get any thing refunded as they haven't paid anything! I really do understand tenants wanting to get their money back if it's found they shouldn't have paid in the first place but I don't understand why they believe they have a right to keep the DHP as well.

cattermole

It isn't what you are proposing isn't reasonable iluvmarmite. It is a legal technicality.

In simple terms they have to refund it because legally they were not able to stop it in the first place, it should have meant the person involved received full Housing Benefit.

They can't get the DHP back (which is a separate payment from a separate budget) because there are no legal powers of recovery for DHP.

All LA's have to operate to regulations, they don't make the regulations but they have to follow them. Otherwise they are operating outside of the law.

I know Lawyers couldn't find anything anywhere that gave them the power to recover the DHP, they can't just knock it off the refund of HB that should have been paid because they have no power to do that.

Morglin

airliner wrote: »

On a side issue, if you have been receiving discretionary housing payments to help meet the costs of the bedroom tax you may have to pay these back as some councils will say they have been paid in error.
The amount of DHPs received will reduce whatever refund is credited into your rent account.

No recovery of DHP is being sought - the return of the 'bedroom tax' is for the tenant to receive with no recovery due.

I see that they now think approx 50,000 tenants could be affected - as the average refund of Bedroom Tax will be £640, (depending on what has been deducted) this is quite a sum!

Lin

Morglin

airliner wrote: »

Our local authority have taken the approach of recovering DHPs in this manner.
We, as a welfare rights department, have challenged the recovery and we still await an outcome.

It is worth knowing for those who may be affected in a similar way.

The government, and the legal bods, have already told councils they have no right of recovery, as it was official error (government), so this council will lose the argument.

Lin

pmlindyloo

I find the question about DHP rather interesting.

Adviceguide say this:

Did you get a Discretionary Housing Payment?

If your council paid you any Discretionary Housing Payments to help with a Housing Benefit shortfall during the period when your benefit was wrongly reduced, they may require you to pay this back. However, they are not allowed to take it off your Housing Benefit entitlement.

Have also read up that there do seem to be no regs to allow this to happen.

Also have seen it said that the DHPs will be used as future rent.

I do not think that there are that many cases where this applies so I suspect that the amount of money involved to go to court to defend any challenges will not make it worth their trying to get it back or use it for future rent.