Council Tax Benefit Official Error-  Recovery of Future Payments

I think the wording cited is legacy wording.  The current wording is, I think:
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(5) Where in consequence of an official error a person has been awarded excess benefit, upon the award being revised or superseded any excess benefit which remains credited to him by the relevant authority in respect of a period after the date of the revision or supersession, shall be recoverable.
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In short, this means the date of the decision that created the overpayment is the relevant date from which “future” benefit (or credits) fall to be recoverable even if there has been an official error.

As an aside, Cmmr Rowland (as was) has since decided that “future” credits don’t even count as CTB at all.  In turn, the recovery of such credits are not within the remit of a FtT.  Cmmr Rowland’s decision is one of several, although there are others that have found otherwise.  However, more recently (in the last year?), a UT has considered the conflicting authorities and the Judge decided s/he preferred Cmmr Rowland’s interpretation.  In short, para 5 of HBR 83 has effectively been rendered pointless.

There are 2 conflicting UtT decisions on whether an advance period (credit of CTB for the whole of CT account year) is an overpayment - CH/3076/06 (Rowlands) and CH/1384/07 (Ramsey). See CPAGs HB/CTB legislation 23rd Edition @ page 719.

CH/3076/06 is more claimant friendly (at least in terms of the admin issues created for recovery). In practice what is likely to happen is that any CTB o/p for a ‘future period’ would lead to a revised CT Bill for the whole of the CT year including the advanced period that the claimant has to pay. Given the usual delays in the decision / appeal process a ‘future’ debt is likely to have become an actual CT arrears for part / whole of the period.

Arguable the LA cannot then seek to recover the o/p for the future CTB o/p from current payments of CTB and also seek to recover it through a revised CT Bill as CT arrears.

Kevin - do you have the refs for the other UtT decisions?

In CSH/0587/2009, Judge May expressly preferred CH/3076/2006 to CH/1384/2007.

NB:  There are in fact several conflicting decisions on this point, but these are the two that ended up in the spotlight.  As far as I can see, it makes no practical difference.

Thanx Kevin - I will entertain Capita with these decisions for various current cases!

I am glad somebody posted that HBinfopb. I have been reading the thread thinking that it was all very interesting from an academic point of view, but no help to the claimant in this case as no matter which decision is preferred they still end up paying.  I was wondering if I had missed something.

As it is, I am not certain it matters to the claimant if they are asked to pay arrears of Council Tax that have always been arrears of Council Tax ,or Arrears of Council Tax that used to be recoverable excess benefit, they end up paying back the same amount for the same period either way.