Benefit overpayments

You may receive an overpayment of Council Tax Support or Housing Benefit. 

This usually happens if you do not inform us of changes in your circumstances within a month of the change. It can also happen because of other errors when calculating your benefit.

Find out how to report a change that affects benefits.

If you are overpaid, we will send you a letter giving you full details of the overpayment. The letter will include:

• how the overpayment happened
• the amount you were overpaid
• the period of the overpayment
• how we will recover the overpayment
• what to do if you disagree with it

You can discuss an overpayment with us by using this online form to contact the Benefits team. You can also call us on Monday to Friday between 9am and 1pm.

Telephone: 01483 755855

Recovering overpayments

We can recover all overpayments, unless they are caused by an 'official error'. This is a mistake made by us or another government agency, such as the DWP or Job Centre. In this situation, you could not reasonably have known you were being overpaid when you were being paid or told about your benefit.

Council Tax Support overpayments

If we have overpaid your Council Tax Support, we will add the amount of the overpayment to your Council Tax bill. Our Council Tax team will then collect the overpayment by increasing your monthly payments.

Pay your Housing Benefit overpayment

If we have overpaid your Housing Benefit, we may send you a bill to pay. You can pay this overpayment bill using the online form below:

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If we do not send you a bill, we may:

• reduce your Housing Benefit payment each week
• ask the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) to reduce your social security benefits and pay an amount towards the debt

We can recover a Housing Benefit overpayment from:

• the claimant
• a person acting on the claimant's behalf
• the person who received the overpayment, such as a landlord

If you disagree with the overpayment

You have a month from the date we first told you about the overpayment to ask us to look at the decision again (known as a revision). You can also make an appeal to the appeal tribunal.

If we look at the decision again and you are still unhappy with our decision, you can ask for an appeal a further month from when we notified you of our review decision.

If you cannot afford the overpayment

If you are experiencing financial hardship and cannot afford to pay the overpayment, we will consider reducing the rate of recovery.

You can make an offer to pay a small amount on a weekly or monthly basis. However, your offer may not necessarily be accepted and you may be asked to complete a budgeting form.

Underlying entitlement

In some cases, it is possible to reduce the amount of your benefit overpayment by awarding 'underlying entitlement'. This is the benefit that you would have been entitled to, had your claim been based on the correct details.

For example: your Jobseeker's Allowance stopped because you started work, but you did not tell us for two months or provide evidence of your new income, so you were overpaid. If you provide evidence of your income at a later date, we can look to reduce the overpayment. There is no time limit for this information.