Housing benefit closed 15 months ago, local authority demanding payment

hary_j

pmlindyloo Thanks for all you support i shall look into some of this.

hary_j

Afraid_of_Kittens wrote: »

So your company never ceased trading you were just between contracts. You were still a Director but with no Directors Remuneration. Did the company have any cash in any bank accounts?

No the company at the time didn't have any cash available.

Alice_Holt

At least you are getting better advice here, than the solicitor's comment to wait until the court date!

pmlindyloo has given you some sensible advice. A SAR is a sensible course of action.
A of K seems to have highlighted the probable difficulty - you didn't supply the required info / paperwork.

I would think they may be a couple of ways forward -
a) one would be to work with the LA, supply all the required paperwork - and try to get them to recalculate the HB using this info. This will involve cooperating with your LA, and a recognition that this situation has arisen, in part, because of your inaction in complying with their requests / procedures.

b) you could try appealing their decision to recover the overpayment. Appeals are time limited, it is not possible to appeal a decision after 13 months. However, because of the address confusion you may be able to use the date of the letter for your current address. Ideally an appeal should be made within 1 month of the decision letter.
The appeal will be heard by a tribunal (not a court), who will decide if the LA's decision was correct.
You will need to supply the information to prove that your did not have earnings as a director during that period. So, company accounts; company bank accounts; your bank accounts; etc, etc.

Difficult to know how that would go, as the LA are entitled to suspend HB if not supplied with all relevant info.

micky2phones

hary_j wrote: »

Initially when i did write to them, they demanding a lot of things to which some of them i did not have access to. Therefore i gave them my accountants details. They did not make any contact with them nor did they acknowledge anything i put in the letter, alongside the evidence provided.

The second letter i wrote, was simple straight forward, asking them i have not had my queries answered and you don't seem interested in what i got to say. There was no further letter until a year letter, which started to demand payments back and threats about deducting from my employer.

I will now write a letter of complaint to them, stating why my queries aren't being answered.

Hi, if you do a complaint letter would that go to or be pass to a complaint department ? Thus confuse matters even more

[Deleted User]

Do you know anyone who can help with your written English? It might help make your letters easier to read. No point in making it easier for the Local Authority to sit on their hands lol.

Again another vote for giving them all the information they have asked for, not just the contact details for your accountant. You ask your accountant for the accounts (in detail, including money in and out of the business bank account). It really isn't very hard.

No point in accusing them of not answering your letters if you aren't helping their assessment process / requests for documents to prove your case. As already said, this is your responsibility, not theirs. They handle hundreds of cases.., you only handle one, and can request the documents much more easily from your accountant than they can (as stated earlier).

Afraid_of_Kittens

micky2phones wrote: »

Hi, if you do a complaint letter would that go to or be pass to a complaint department ? Thus confuse matters even more

At the moment there is no good cause to complain.

Looking at what the OP posted I envisage this scenario:-

1) Paid claimant using low wages then as unemployed.

2) Discover own company.

3) Asks for details of this company.

4) Provides some details but says get the rest from his accountant.

5) Claim cancelled as information not provided.

Once information is provided they will use the offsetting rules so hopefully no overpayment.