Hi, I have a client who receives a state pension and has a small part time job. Her hours and pay went up and as result she was overpaid. She tells me she reported increased pay and queried her HB payments at her local housing office and was told all was ok. She has appealed as it's not recoverable (no failure to disclose, couldn't reasonably know she was being overpaid). Housing benefit's response has been to ask her (amongst other things) how and when she reported the increase in her pension each year in April from 2004 to 2008.
Am I correct in thinking local authorities are informed of the yearly update and customers don't need to report this? It seems an odd thing to be asking especially as the overpayment occurred between April and November 2008.

matt

No, sadly. There is no exchange of Pension information between DWP and LA's UNLESS the pension is on Pension Credit with an assessed Income figure. Most LA's use a percentage to increase the State Pension rates each year, which is reasonably accurate, and rely on the requirement for a claimant to read and check their notification letter and let the LA know if anything is not correct. Any change in income should be reported to the LA, even if the customer believes they may already know about it. Its the only way to make sure there are no overpayments.Speaking from experience as a former assessor, I'd rather be told twice than not at all.
As its an appeal, the LA is probably taking the opportunity to check all the facts of the case to ensure that any OP figure quoted is correct, and to make sure they know what the customer has been doing so they can make a proper recoverability decision.
Is the Housing office part of the LA or has the housing stock been transferred to an HA at some point? Its not unknown for people to assume they still rent from the council when they dont, and an HA office has no duty to pass the info on, even though its good customer service to do so.

Hi, thanks for that. The Client doesn't get Pension Credit but the notification she got in march 08 refers to her assessed Income figure which is incorrect. However correspondence from Housing Benefit indicates the figures were obtained from the pension service in dec 2003.

The property is still LA owned.

However the more I delve the more vague the client becomes and her working hours have changed 2 times in the last 5 years!

I love a challenge!

If she isnt on Pension credit, who sent the notification with the assessed income figure on?
When she received this notification (assuming it was from the LA) did she tell them it was wrong? Has she reported any of her income changes to the LA? (sounds like no will be the answer- not unusual)
The Pension Service do provide information to LA's, if its asked for, which may be what happened in Dec03.
Challenges are what HB and CTB are all about......welcome to the club!

In my view the LA are trying it on in this case. It looks like revenge for the overpayments on account of wages being argued to be not recoverable.

The LA MUST already know if when and how the changes in her pension were reported because surely they must keep a record.

The burden is on them to prove its case if it determines that there were recoverable overpaymetns on account of a failure to disclose changes in her pension.

The LA must also give clear instrustions in its award notices about reporting changes in circumstances, and from experience I know many automated award notices are deficient in this respect.

I have successfully argued at Tribunals that the Council's misleading instructions amounted to official errors that caused overpayments and so the overpayments were not recoverable.

As for the "assessed income figure", I think its far too technical and opaque for most claimants to be expected to know what to do about it.