What happens to the overpayment if my Housing Benefit ends?
If you stop receiving Housing Benefit and you have an outstanding Housing Benefit overpayment you will be sent an invoice.
If you do not contact us to make an arrangement to pay the overpayment within 14 days you will be sent a Reminder invoice and given a further 7 days. If you still fail to either pay the invoice or contact us to make a payment arrangement, further recovery action will be taken.
- if you are in receipt of a DWP Benefit we can ask the DWP to recover the overpayment from your weekly benefit payments. Please see the Prescribed Benefits List for the DWP Benefits that we are allowed to recover from
- if you are working we can ask your employer to apply a Direct Earnings Attachment (DEA).
- if you are in receipt of Housing Benefit at a different Local Authority we can ask that Local Authority to recover the overpayment from your Housing Benefit payments
- we can refer your overpayment to an independent Debt Collection Agency
- we can refer your overpayment to our Legal Department