Hi I need some help and hope somebody can help me.
One of my clients started receiving letters stating that she needs to pay more service charges. We called Housing and it turned out that she was overpaid Income Support therefore HB but she has never received any letters about it.
we knew this will happen as in the last 3 months i made calls to Belfast and was told that she was paid more IS but it was an official error. Incapacity benefit informed Income support that my client failed to attend medical but Income support failed to respond. it took them 3 months to act on that.

were we supposed to receive letters about Overpayments ?
i think that clients should be informed so they can appeal, we will appeal on the grounds that it was their mistake to continue paying. My client is a care leaver and she would've been supported by the LCT if the Income support stopped at that time.

any help will be appreciated, what should i do ???

Hi Antonia,

It sounds a bit messy. From what you've been told, it sounds as if IS ceased because client (allegedly) failed to attend a medical. However, if your client is also receiving Incapacity Benefit, that should have ceased as well (if it hasn't, I can't see why IS has ceased) and you'd need to sort out the failure to attend the medical issue. In relation to the HB overpayment, your client should have been notified when HB (and presumably CTB as well) ceased. The local authority should have asked her for confirmation of her actual income (on the presumption that IS had ceased) and assessed her entitlement to HB/CTB based on that. She should have been notified of any resulting overpayment (and her appeal rights explained in the notification letter). You're still within the absolute time limits to lodge a late appeal even if your client was notified, so it's not too late to dispute the overpayment.

However, none of it quite hangs together and I think that if you have a local agency that specialises in benefit advice this might be one to refer on...

Was she ever in receipt of incapacity benefit as such, or just (like so many people) incapacity credits and income support? If so it would explain why the failure to attend didn't immediately stop her benefits.

Thank you for your help.

Just a few points really about her Incapacity Benefit- she was getting Income support based on Incapacity as she did not have enough NI contributions to get the Incapacity Benefit.

Housing Benefit changed their decision on the 4th December and she does not need to pay the Overpaid HB.
the problem is that she was not told that she was overpaid Income support and it was not her fault as the agencies communication was poor.

this case is very messy as the client is not engaging well, she is in rent arrears of 1600 pounds from Nov'07 to Feb'08 i have applied for backdating HB on the grounds that she had her IS backdated for that period and HB was supposed to be paid. This backdating was refused and i am still fighting about it.
There is a claim that we failed to appeal within a month of the decision made but I have appealed verbally and was waiting for the officer to come back from leave etc.

OHHHH It is messy this case.

Thank you for your help and sorry I am not very good in explaining but hope to learn.