Benefit advise please.

chrisss_2

Hi, i am writing this on behalf of my mother and father..

I'm not sure which section of the forum i should be posting in..

Basically my mother and farther are both elderly and live in private rented accommodation, because of this they were getting financial help through the council..

Recently there benefits have stopped because there both combined accounts exceeded £16,000. I know you are suppose to inform them when this happens, the total over was approx £1000, which was
caused because of interests being added on from the bank, not from additional income so it was a genuine mistake..

Because of this the council have decided to stop there benefits for the rest of the year, and they are now demanding the over payments back of of a total of £3000...

What should my mother and father do? it seems wrong

Please can someone help! thank you!

McKneff

It isn't wrong, they have claimed benefits that they are not entitled to by not informing them about savings.


As far as I am aware Benefits start to be affected at £6.000 and no entitlement at all at £16,000


They should ask for a payment plan to repay the money.

Caz3121

they should have advised them when their savings were over £6k so the reduction would have started being added to their housing benefit

Hopefully they will not count the repayment of the arrears as deprivation they will be down under £16k and should be able to get some reduced HB until it drops bellow £6k when they will get the full amount for their situation
If they make any large purchases they should keep records as, it is likely, that if they drop to under £6k in a quicker time than expected there will be questions asked on where the money went (eg they cannot give it away)

Eager_Elephant

Make sure the Overpayment is correct, they should assess the capital every 13 weeks and input that to the claim.


Some councils input a flat amount across the whole period of the overpayment.


You are allowed to pay the money overpaid out of the capital which will take them below the limit.


Once they have claimed again they need to keep on top of their capital to make sure they don't go over.