RR2 - A guide to Housing Benefit and Council Tax Benefit
Changes in entitlement
- Changes of circumstances
- Revised payments
- Overpayments of Housing Benefit/excess Council Tax Benefit
Changes of circumstances
This section explains how your entitlement to Housing Benefit (HB)/Council Tax Benefit (CTB) may change.
You must notify your council immediately if there is a change in anything that might affect your right to or the amount of HB/CTB. [HB Reg 79&88, (SPC) reg 59 &69 CTB Reg 67&75, (SPC) reg 50&59]
This will include:
- where you live
- or who you live with
- or the Child Benefit you are receiving
- or your income, savings and investments
- or your rent (but only if you do not pay this direct to the council) (for HB only)
- or if you stop getting Income Support or income-based Jobseeker’s Allowance (JSA)
- or if you get a job
- or if you or your partner go into hospital
- or if there is any other change in your circumstances which you might reasonably be expected to know might affect your right to HB.
The changes must be notified in writing.
Most of these changes will affect your HB/CTB in the following benefit week, but they will take effect at other times in the following cases:
Changes in rent – the date from which a change in rent affects the amount of HB depends on the particular tenancy, and whether your HB is restricted. Your HB office will let you know if your benefit will change because of the change in your rent.
Changes in the amount of council tax payable will affect your CTB from the day on which the change occurs.
Changes made by the Government in income tax or National Insurance (NI) contributions may be ignored by the council for up to 30 benefit weeks after the date on which they take effect (normally the beginning of April). This is because changes like these normally take some time to work their way into your pay.
Changes in regulations for HB/CTB take effect on the same day that the change comes into force.
If there are to be any changes in the amount of HB/CTB you get, your local council will let you know within 14 days of the change taking place, or as soon as possible after that.
Revised payments
If you think your HB/CTB is wrong and you question it your HB/CTB may be changed. If an increase is backdated, your HB/CTB will be adjusted to take account of this.
Overpayments of Housing Benefit/excess Council Tax Benefit
If you have received too much HB/CTB, for example because your circumstances have changed, the local council will normally want that money repaid. The extra HB that you have been paid is known as the overpayment and the extra CTB is known as the excess benefit. Getting the money back is called recovery. Throughout this section the term ‘overpayment’ is used for both benefits even though the technical term for overpaid CTB is ‘excess benefit’. [HB Regs 98-105, CTB Regs 83-91]
Overpaid CTB may include both a direct payment of benefit, for example in cash, by cheque, by giro or by voucher, and also an entry of CTB as a credit to your council tax account.
Recoverable overpayments
Most overpayments can be recovered by the council. The only exception may be when a mistake was made by the council or the social security office and you could not be expected to know that there had been an overpayment. [HB Regs 99(2)-(3), CTB Regs 84(2)-(3)]
The following are examples of some recoverable overpayments. The list is not complete, as there are other possible causes of overpayment.
Misrepresentation
If the council has received misleading information from you – whether you intended to mislead or not – then any resulting overpayment can be recovered by the council.
Failure to disclose information
If you do not give the council the information it needs to work out your HB/CTB properly, then any resulting overpayment can be recovered by the council.
Rent or council tax reductions
If your rent or council tax is reduced and that reduction is backdated, your HB/CTB covering that backdated period may have been overpaid. This overpayment may be recovered.
Letting you know
If you have been given too much HB/CTB the council will write to you about the overpayment and tell you: [HB Regs Sch 6, CTB Regs Sch 6]
- the reason for the overpayment
- how much HB/CTB you have been overpaid
- how long you have been given too much
- whether the overpayment will be recovered from your continuing HB/CTB, and, if so, how much at a time.
The council may not write to you about certain technical excess benefits which are as a result of a change in the tax or a late award of council tax transitional reductions.
You can ask to have the decision reviewed.
Amounts ignored
If the council decides that part of the overpayment was caused by official error it will ignore that amount, but only if you could not be expected to know that there had been an overpayment. [HB Reg 99, CTB Reg 84]
If you were overpaid through a rent rebate or CTB (though not through a rent allowance) but you pay more than your rebated rent or council tax for the period of the overpayment, the council may deduct an amount equal to the extra you paid when working out an overpayment of HB/CTB. [HB Reg 104(3), CTB Reg 90(3)]
Undeclared capital
If you said you had less capital than you really had, then you may have been given too much HB/CTB.
If you have been paid too much HB/CTB for 13 weeks or more, the council will use a special calculation to work out how much HB/CTB you have been overpaid. This is because if you had not been paid too much HB/CTB you might have had to use some of your capital to pay your rent or council tax. The council will take this into account in the calculation and so may reduce the amount of the overpayment accordingly. [HB Reg 103, CTB Reg 89]
Methods of recovery
Local councils are responsible for recovering overpayments. They can use a number of methods to do this but HB and CTB cannot be recovered from one another. In some cases they may refer the overpayment to the local social security office to have money recovered from other benefit if: [HB Reg 105, CTB Reg 91]
- the overpayment was caused by misrepresentation or failure to disclose information
- and the council cannot recover the money from continuing HB/CTB (see below).
The following are some of the more usual ways the council may recover overpayments:
By adding to your council tax account [CTB Reg 87(2)]
By adding the amount of excess CTB to your council tax account. This means that the overpayment of CTB increases the amount of council tax you have to pay.
Direct recovery
The council may make a direct request to have its money back. It may ask you or anyone with responsibility for your HB/CTB to return the overpayment. The council can also make a direct recovery from your landlord if HB was paid directly to them.
The council may recover HB overpaid to one tenant from benefit paid direct to landlords for their other tenants. If recovery is made from other tenants’ benefit, these tenants will not be required to make up the shortfall in their rent caused by the deductions. Their rent obligation will be taken to have been discharged (to the extent of the pre-reduction payment) despite the fact that some or all benefit payments may have been withheld.
From continuing HB
If you are still getting HB, the council may arrange to have it reduced over a period of time so that the overpayment can be recovered. Your council may use this method to recover your overpayment from your benefit which is continuing to be paid direct to your landlord. If you are getting Income Support and the council decides to recover an overpayment from your continuing HB, it will normally limit how much it recovers each week. You can ask to repay more than this limited weekly amount if you think you can afford to make the repayments more quickly.
If you are suffering hardship because of the recovery of overpayment, the council may reduce the amount you repay each week.
From arrears of Housing Benefit
If you are owed arrears of HB while the council is recovering an overpayment, the arrears may be used to recover the overpayment.
Legal action
If the council decides that you can afford to repay an overpayment, as a last resort it may take legal action to recover the money.
Death of the claimant
HB may have been paid before a claimant died which covers a period after their death. After careful consideration this money may be recovered by the local council from the dead person’s estate.
An overpayment of HB/CTB covering a period before a claimant’s death may not be discovered until after their death – for example, through undeclared capital. In this case the council can recover the money from the dead person’s estate by writing to the legal representative or executor (if any) of the dead person.
Cheques that have been cashed by someone else after the claimant’s death will be treated as overpayments and may be recovered by the council from the person who cashed them.
