Overpayments, Reconsiderations and Appeals
Skip Menu
Why has an overpayment occurred?
If an overpayment has arisen on your claim, you will receive a letter or email informing you of the amount and reason for the overpayment. You have a month, from the date of the notification letter, in which to ask for this decision to be reviewed and reconsidered.
An overpayment of Housing Benefit can occur for various reasons, examples of which are:
- If your income or capital increases.
- Your rent reduces.
This is not a definitive list, so to avoid overpayments you should let us know immediately if your circumstances change. Further details, and which changes will need to be reported, can be viewed here.
If you are still in receipt of Housing Benefit, we will start recovering the overpayment from your weekly entitlement. The current amount we recover is £13.65 per week (2024/25). This can be increased if you are working by half of any earnings disregards applied to your earnings.
If you are no longer entitled to Housing Benefit, we will issue you an invoice for the overpayment and for any previous overpayment you may be repaying. Details of how to repay an invoice are shown here, and on back of the invoice.
If you are unable to pay the invoice in full and would like to arrange a payment plan then you can do so by completing the Statement of Income and Expenditure (online) with an offer of payment. A downloadable version is also available here.
Overpayments of council tax reduction are transferred to the claimant’s council tax account and included in future instalments. Further information about council tax can be viewed here. If you are unable to make the monthly payment for your council tax, please contact the revenues team on 01684 295010 or email revenues@tewkesbury.gov.uk.
You can now manage your council tax account online, using our Citizen Access Revenues Portal. You can set up or amend a direct debit, make payments, change your details, or notify us about a move. You can also apply for a council tax discount, and search for council tax bands and charges for properties within the Tewkesbury Borough area.
Pay your overpayment
When paying your overpayment please have your invoice number to hand.
Internet banking/standing order
Request an electronic transfer from your account to our bank account.
Lloyds Bank
Sort code: 30-80-12
Account number: 24598768
Please include your invoice number as the payment reference.
By telephone
You can use either your debit or credit card to make a payment over the phone. Please have your Invoice Number ready and then ring 03300 883709. Please note you will be charged the same as dialling a local number (or this will be included in any free call package you have with your mobile phone provider).
Online
You can pay using your debit or credit card. The minimum payment is £1.00. Go to Payments – Tewkesbury Borough Council and select Housing Benefit debt/overpayment, then follow the instructions.
Overpayment FAQs
They usually happen if you don’t tell us about a change in circumstances which could affect your benefit, or because we have made a mistake when calculating your benefit.
Overpayments can happen if:
- You forgot to tell us that if your income has increased.
- Somebody moves into or out of your home.
- You move out of your home and do not tell us.
- You start work or change jobs.
- The circumstances of other adults living with you change.
- A dependent over 18 stops receiving child benefit.
The list above only gives examples of situations that could cause overpayments and you must tell us about anything that happens that might affect your benefit entitlement.
Even if you have told the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) about your change in circumstance, you must still let us know yourself and not leave it to the DWP to tell us.
Every time we adjust your benefit you will receive a letter which states the information we have used to assess your claim. It is important you read this letter, as your are responsible for making sure that the information we have used is correct.
We will send you a letter giving you full details of the overpayment – how the overpayment happened, the amount you were overpaid, the period of the overpayment, how we will recover the overpayment and what to do if your disagree with it.
You will also receive an invoice which gives you your invoice number, and tells you how to pay the overpayment.
We can recover all overpayments, unless they are caused by an ‘official error’ and you could not reasonably have known you were being overpaid when you were being paid or told about your benefit. An official error is a mistake we or another government agency such as the DWP or Job Centre make.
Each case is different but when working out who the overpayment should be recoverable from we will look at:
- What caused the overpayment.
- Who received notification of the award.
- Who received payment.
- Who could have known the benefit was wrong.
As a general guide:
- If either the claimant or the person who was paid caused the overpayment, we will recover the overpayment from that person.
- If the overpayment was due to official error (our mistake), we can recover from either the claimant or payee providing they could reasonably have known they were being overpaid.
- If the overpayment is nobody’s fault, we can recover the overpayment from either the claimant or the person who received the benefit.
If we make a mistake and it is not reasonable for you or your landlord to have known that the benefit was wrong, we should not recover the overpayment.
Please contact us for advice – you can speak to a benefit officer or get an appointment with an overpayment officer.
You can also ask for a formal statement of reasons which explains in detail the reason for the assessment and any resulting overpayment. You must do this within one month of receiving our decision letter. Once you have received a statement of reasons you have a further 14 days to make an appeal.
Underlying entitlement can help to reduce an overpayment of housing benefit or council tax reduction.
Any overpayment should be reduced by any benefit which you would have been entitled to had all your circumstances been known at the time of the overpayment.
For example if your job seekers allowance stopped because you started work and you failed to provide proof of your new income, you could be overpaid. If at a later date, you provide pay slips which show that based on your income, you could have qualified for some housing benefit, we could use underlying entitlement to reduce the overpayment by the amount of benefit you were entitled to. This will reduce the amount of the debt owed.
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) or to make an appeal to the appeal tribunal.
If we look at the decision again and you are still unhappy with our decision, you have a further month from when we notified you of your review decision, to ask for an appeal.
If we have overpaid your council tax reduction, we will add the amount of the overpayment to your council tax bill. Our council tax office will then collect the overpayment by increasing your monthly payments.
If we have overpaid your housing benefit, there are several ways that the overpayment can be recovered, including:
- Reducing your Housing Benefit payment each week.
- Sending you a bill to pay.
- Asking the Department for Work and Pensions to reduce your social security benefits and pay an amount towards the debt.
- Asking your new council to make the deductions from your Housing Benefit if you have moved out of the Tewkesbury Borough.
If you remain in receipt of Housing Benefit, then we normally recover the outstanding overpayment by deducting an amount every week from your Housing Benefit to reduce the outstanding overpayment. You will have to make up any shortfall that this causes to your rent due.
In all cases we will invoice the landlord for the overpayment.
If a landlord does not pay the invoice, we can apply for a county court judgement. This is where a court orders them to repay a debt. We can take action up to six years from the date that:
- the overpayment was made; or
- the debt was last acknowledged by the landlord, whichever is later.
If we decide to recover an overpayment from the landlord, we may take it from payments we make to that landlord for another tenant’s Housing Benefit. This is often known as ‘blameless tenant recovery’. It usually happens when the tenant who is overpaid is no longer entitled to benefit. We cannot recover the money from the overpaid tenant’s ongoing benefit but we can recover it from the landlord.
The landlord cannot penalise the other tenant (the blameless one) so they must still credit the other tenant’s rent account as though blameless tenant recovery had not happened.
You can make an offer to pay monthly instalments. Please contact our benefits team who can provide you with further information.
If you are having financial difficulties, please visit our website Financial advice & support where you will find some useful information and contact details of local support that may be of assistance to you.
Housing Benefit reconsideration
If you do not agree with a decision we have made, you can ask for us to look at it again (this is called a reconsideration). To request a reconsideration, you need to write to or email us within one month of the date of the decision to say why you think the decision is wrong and provide any further information you think is relevant. We will then look at your claim again and write to you once we have done this. We will aim to reply to you within 21 days.
If we do not change our decision you can appeal to His Majesty’s Courts and Tribunal Service (HMCTS). To do this, your appeal must:
- Be in writing.
- Be delivered, by whatever means (e.g. post, fax, email, in person) to the Council.
- Provide the name and address of any representative and an address where documents may be sent.
- Be signed by the person making the appeal.
- Say what is being appealed and the date of the decision.
- Give the grounds for the appeal.
- Be written and received within one month of the date of the reconsideration letter.
If you appeal to HMCTS, we will prepare the submission and send it to them and a copy to you or your representative. You are then able to add any documents to the bundle yourself (HMCTS will send us a copy so you will not have to). The hearing can be an oral one or in person and the tribunal will then notify the Council and yourself of their decision (in person hearings are usually notified on the day).
Council Tax Reduction reconsideration
If you do not agree with a decision we have made, you can ask for us to look at it again (this is called a reconsideration). To request a reconsideration, you need to write or email us to say why you think the decision is wrong and provide any further information you think is relevant. We will then look at your claim again and write to you once we have done this. We should reply to you within 2 months of receiving your letter or email.
Once we have reviewed the decision, if you still do not agree with it, you can ask for a review. You do this by applying directly to the Valuation Tribunal (VT) which is independent of the Council. There is an online form which can be found Valuation Tribunal Service’s website. If you do not have access to a printer, please telephone us and we can print the form off and send it to you in the post.
There is a deadline to appeal to the VT. You must apply to the tribunal within 42 days (6 weeks) of receiving the Council’s decision on their request for review. If the Council has not responded to the request for review after 2 months, you can appeal straight to the Valuation Tribunal.