Luton Council paying too much housing benefit

[Steve C]

I'm not sure what to do next. Over the years housing benefit from Luton Council has got harder and harder to receive either accurately or within a reasonable time. At present I have two ongoing problems that I'm trying to sort.

One has gone to appeal because they decided to deduct from me, an overpayment given to a tenant for a different tenancy with a different landlord.

The second and most worrying, as when the penny does eventually drop, it will be easy target muggins who they deduct the money from. I have a tenant from Lithuania who has worked here for several years. She got made redundant at Christmas. It took them until June before they paid any benefit. Because of the arrears, most was sent to me. From the amount being paid, it is clear they are paying the one bedroom self contained rate. She in actual fact has shared facilities, (it's an HMO,) and all the bills are included. They are even giving her the Housing Allowance top up because it seems like her rent is low. She seems to think that is what she is entitled to, (because her friend in a one bed flat gets it). I have sent a recorded letter to the council to tell them they are paying too much. Instead of rectifying the problem they have now made another payment direct to me. I know she is spending her extra windfall. I think they have paid about £40 a week too much, since January.

[Emma1973]

Put aside the money being sent to you, ready to return it when they ask for it back!They cant ask you to pay back LHA paid direct to the T, you cant be asked to pay back anymore than you have received. They may not even ask you to pay the money they just paid to you as you have already informed them of the possible overpayment.

Could you also just clarify the age of the tenant and how many rooms she has the exclusive use of, including kitchen and/or bathroom

[Steve C]

Put aside the money being sent to you, ready to return it when they ask for it back!They cant ask you to pay back LHA paid direct to the T, you cant be asked to pay back anymore than you have received. They may not even ask you to pay the money they just paid to you as you have already informed them of the possible overpayment.

Could you also just clarify the age of the tenant and how many rooms she has the exclusive use of, including kitchen and/or bathroom

The money I have received covers the money owed. If I put it aside for a later date and then pay it back to them, then there is a shortfall on the rent paid. It is not a case that I am worried that I will owe money that I can't afford to pay back. The tenant sees me receiving £315 each month, so as far as she is concerned the rent has been paid.

She is in her 40's and has exclusive use of her bedroom only. The tenant has no money left each week, she thinks our benefit system is great.

[Emma1973]

The council arent concerned about the money she owes! If there has been an overpayment to you, they will ask for it back regardless of whether it then leaves her in arrears.

If she isnt entitled to it, she aint allowed to have it, the fact that its paid direct to you doesnt matter!

However.......if they do ask you to pay it back, I think you may well have a case to ask for the overpayment to be disregarded based on their official error. Official error is the only way an overpayment cannot be clawed back.

[Steve C]

Further to my earlier posts, the council have now got their calculations correct regarding the amount of benefit that should be paid, (and only because I continually badgered them to re-check it). As I suspected, they want me to repay the money. I have appealed this decision on the basis that, 1. It was an official error that caused the problem, and 2. They continued to make overpayments after they had written notice from me saying that they were paying too much.

I have now received a Directions Notice from the Tribunals Service. The council claim that the tribunal has no jurisdiction and secondly that I have no right of appeal. I now have 14 days to respond.

Before I respond to this notice, can anybody see that I have got this wrong somewhere. To me it seems quite obvious, council get it wrong, you appeal their decision with an independent tribunal making a decision. Am I really doing this wrong, or is it more a case that the council could not think of anything sensible to say in responding to the claim. If the tribunal hear the claim and say I need to pay up, it's one thing, but to have the council argue that the Tribunal Service should not even hear my appeal is something totally different.

[claret66]

It sounds as though there are a couple of different issues here:

There were two different categories of decision made by Luton Council. The first was to revise the amount of benefit paid to your tenant. This seems as though it was a correct decision and was prompted by your letter.

The second decision relates to the overpayment of benefit that arose as a consequence of making the first decision (bear with me!)

Local authorities have to decide whether there is an overpayment, what caused the overpayment, whether the overpayment is recoverable and who to recover it from.

In this case, the overpayment was caused by LA error as they used the wrong amount to calculate the HB paid to you on behalf of your tenant. They have decided to attempt to recover the overpayment as you or the tenant "could be reasonably expected to be aware that you were being overpaid". This is the only way that an LA error overpayment can be treated as recoverable.

I'm guessing now but it seems as though the LA have referred the first decision rather than the second to the Tribunals Service - as this would be out of their jurisdiction.

My advice would be to contact them to attempt to clarify which decision they've referred and why it is out of jurisdiction.

Hope this helps. Good luck!

[Steve C]

:eek:Thanks for reply. Been sitting here for last 3 hours trying to get my head around all of the facts and get a letter off to The Tribunals Service. Makes perfect sense what you are saying. Five years of dealing with this council tells me that trying to talk to them is really not that easy and that I will spend 40 or 50 minutes in a queue for nothing.

Regarding the points that you make though. It was the council and not me that referred the matter to a tribunal. I wrote to the council, they acknowledged with a promise of looking into the matter and getting back to me. They didn't get back to me. It's making me think that the jurisdiction issue is because they have not re-assessed their original decision as should be the case before a tribunal gets a look in. Another cock up if that's the case.

The tenant had sat down with an advisor who went through all of the figures with her. I don't think she could have been reasonably expected to know there was an error. The council used the one room self contained rate to work out the benefit and not the one room shared rate. I only knew there was an error because I regularly check the maximum payable. Her rent was greater than the one room shared rent, so she should have made up the balance. Instead they paid all of the rent plus gave her a top up because she was below the maximum of the self contained rate that they chose to use. She was adamant she was receiving the correct amount, having sat down with an advisor and also having a breakdown of how the payments were made up. Looking at the breakdown there was no way of telling that the maximum payments they could make were based on the wrong accommodation type.

I had notification as to what they were paying as it had taken 6 months to assess and they were paying me direct. Before any payment was made I had called them to say there was an error. I also called them several times after the initial payment and wrote too. Despite confirmation that my letter was on file they made a further payment four weeks later.

[Emma1973]

You can certainly appeal, its up to the Tribunal whether your appeal is valid and no one else!

Usually the person appealing is the claimant, however you do have the right to appeal as you are 'someone from whom the LA decides to recover an overpayment from'

You really Have you had a written statement of reasons from the council, finding out exactly their reasons for refusing the appeal will help massively!

You say you have had directions from the Tribunal already, what exactly are they saying? Are they the ones claiming you have no right to appeal, etc.

I'm afraid I'm a little confused on the timeline of what has already happened and what stage of the process you are at now!

Does your council have a specialist landlord advisor? They are usually a great mine of information!

[Michael Clayton]

This is an official error. However, it is recoverable because you knew the situation. In terms of the overpayment, the council has got the discretion to recover from the landlord or the claimant. As such, there are two parties are affected: landlord and claimant.

The landlord: there is no argument against the method of recovery. However, you could ask the local authority to exercise discretion in not recovering the overpayments from HB as you are concerned that the claimant will be facing difficulty on account of the shortfall.

Also, just to tidy the other point up, the local authority must still submit any non-appealable decision to the tribunal. From what has been written, it would appear as though your appeal is against the imposition of a lower LHA (something that is not appealable) but this is guess work. Tell me the precise reason(s).

My advice would be to involve the tenant as a person affected. She too could ask for the overpayment to be written off on discretionary grounds (without checking, I believe the provisions are contained somewhere in the Child Support, Pensions and Social Security Act). Her case is arguably stronger than yours (in your honesty, you have conceded ground) as there may be language problems and she could also argue that she did not understand the significance of the LHA classification.