Housing Benefit Overpayment Appeal

Hi

Just looking for some guidance on a potential Housing Benefit overpayment appeal we will be lodging soon - I haven’t dealt with HB a lot but have read the rules from CPAG and just need some clarity.

It says in the CPAG handbook that all HB overpayments are recoverable unless it is an official error - does that mean that you can’t appeal it unless it was a error on the LA part?

The HB overpayment occurred due to her partner moving in and she was paid more than entitled, however the dates are wrong and need appealing (cl’s partner moved in 2022 and they’ve gone from 2020 as have ESA which we are appealing on the same grounds).

Am I still able to make an appeal on the grounds that from 2020 to part-way in 2022 that there is no overpayment and she was entitled to it?

Thanks

Adam

Yes - there is a difference between entitlement (and therefore the existence or amount of overpayment) and the recoverability of an established overpayment. If your client is going to say “actually, my partner moved in on some other date so I haven’t been overpaid to the extent the LA says I have” then that is purely an issue of entitlement and it doesn’t raise any issue about recoverability.

If your client were to say (for example) “I accept that my partner moved in when they say - however I told the LA dozens of times and they failed to action it and kept paying me so why should I have to pay it back” that would be the sort of thing that would go to recoverability.

Recoverability challenges are harder on HB than they are on legacy benefits (and impossible on UC) but that doesn’t prevent someone challenging whether there is an overpayment in the first place on any benefit. This is something which seems to be a fairly common source of confusion and there is a bit of a myth that the rules on recoverability prevent any sort of challenge to overpayment decision making. They don’t.

Thanks Elliot - thats much more clearer!