What happens when you've been paid too much housing benefit?

What is an overpayment?

An overpayment is an amount of housing benefit which has been paid to you but which you were not entitled to receive. They occur if something happens which changes the amount of your benefit, but we did not know about this change at the time.

This could be something like:

• a change in your income: for example starting work, having an increase in your wages or receiving a new entitlement to benefit

• moving address

• someone else living with you has had a change in their income

You don't have to wait for the change to happen. If you know you are going to be moving address or starting a new job for example you can let us know in advance. 

Can you ask me for the money back?

Usually we will ask for the overpayment to be repaid. We will only consider not asking for the money back if;

• the overpayment was our fault and

• you could not have realised that you were getting too much benefit.

Can an overpayment be reduced?

We try to make sure that we have all the information about your circumstances before we make a decision. However even after the overpayment has been created we can still go back and look at your claim again.

When we write to tell you about the overpayment we will offer you the opportunity to provide us with more evidence about your circumstances to reduce the overpayment.

If you believe that the information contained on your notification letter is not correct, please contact us as soon as you can. Our contact details are at the top right hand corner of this page.

What can I do if I do not agree with your decision?

If you do not agree with any of our decisions about overpayments you can ask us to look at it again.

You can appeal against our decision that

• the overpayment is recoverable or

• that you should be the person liable to repay the overpayment

If you believe we have not used the correct information to work out your claim, please contact to let us know what you think is wrong.

How do you get the money back?

We can recover overpayments in the following ways:

From ongoing payments of your housing benefit

There are legal limits to how much we can take each week. We will not take more than £10.80 a week unless you are working or have committed fraud. 

If the amount we take each week causes you a problem, we may be able to change it and take a smaller amount.

By using other money we owe you

If we owe you housing benefit for another period, we can hold on to the money and use it to repay your overpayment. 

From your rent account, if you are a Six Town Housing tenant

If you are a tenant of Six Town Housing and your rent account is in credit, we may be able to use this money to offset your overpayment. But we will not put your rent account into arrears.

By sending you a bill

If you are no longer in receipt of housing benefit we can send you a bill to ask you to make arrangements to pay.

See our overpayments team page for details of how to make a payment.

If we do not hear from you, we may register the debt with the County Court and ask them to enforce it. This is the same as having a court order against you, so it will affect your credit rating.

From your landlord

If we've been paying your benefit to a private landlord or housing association, we may ask them to repay the money.

In general, if we decide the tenant caused the overpayment and the landlord could not have known about it, we would expect the tenant to repay.

Other ways we can get the money back

We can ask the Department for Works and Pensions to take money out of your income support, jobseekers allowance, or employment support allowance.

We can ask another council to take money out of any housing benefit they are paying you.

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