Child tax credit overpayment appeal/dispute query

Hellsbells77

We have our annual statement for CTC for 2015-2016 and we have been told we have been overpaid by around £32. Not a huge amount in the grand scheme of things but it appears that this is due to them only classing my son's childcare up to 1st August 2015 as eligible when we had told them he was in childcare until 20th August 2015 (shortly after that he started school so we knew we wouldn't be entitled to CTC after his childcare finished).

The background to this is that the nursery provider we had been using and were booked in to use until 20th August gave us a few days notice that they were shutting at the end of July. This left us in a situation that we had to find an alternative provider quickly, which we did (they were OFSTED registered as well). A couple of weeks later I found out that we needed to let them know of the change in provider, which I duly did and told them he would be finishing on 20th August.

The person on the phone told me that usually a child has to be with a provider for a minimum 4 weeks (I hadn't seen this information anywhere, if I had then we could have made different decisions about the childcare) but there is usually a run on period and so shouldn't be a problem. Clearly it is.

Obviously this change wasn't through our own choice and wouldn't have been done if the previous nursery provision hadn't closed unexpectedly so I was wondering if we had any grounds to appeal the decision to be able to get it included (when we get our final decision letter) and, therefore, reconsider that there isn't actually an overpayment? Or is it a dispute we need to go for? I'm not sure which we would come under

The other query is whether we should get in touch with them to say the information is incorrect before the 31st July deadline (yes, I know we haven't got long!) or whether they would just say we were too late for this anyway?

If these additional weeks are taken into account then our average weekly childcare cost goes up from £35 per week to £39 per week, and, with this, the online calculator actually says we would be due around £70 rather than us owing HMRC. Even if the average weekly cost is kept at the same amount rather than increased we would still be owed not quite £20.

Any help or advice as to which direction to take this in would be gratefully received. Thanks!

Darksparkle

I know they don't take changes in costs of less than £10 per week but to be honest I can't remember the rules about changing provider.

I would call them and go over all the dates again and ask them to check that the correct dates have been applied. If they won't change it then appeal.

Hellsbells77

Thanks Darksparkle. That makes sense to me so will give them a call. Hopefully I can get through as no doubt they are pretty busy right now! But my fault for not getting round to sorting it sooner.