In the Jan 05 Housing Benefit Direct Bulletin, reference has been made to a recent Local Gvt. Ombudsman's report relating to an LA recovering an overpayment before the claimant had an opportunity to appeal. Can anybody point me in the direction of this report please?

It might be on the Ombudsman's website www.lgo.org.uk

Even if it is not you should be able to contact them for a copy.

extract from the HB/CTB Overpayments Guide - http://www.dwp.gov.uk/housingbenefit/manuals/overpay/parts/04reco_b.asp#e

4.07 No matter what the reason for an overpayment is, or from whom it is decided to recover from, it is good practice not to start recovery before the one calendar month appeal rights from the decision notice being issued has elapsed.

Thanks for your help, but I'd already tried the LGO website and the report is not there yet and I don't know the name of the case in order to get a copy. Unfortunately although I've made forceful arguments to our HB service armed with the good practice guide they have only conceded that they will stop recovery action if an actual appeal is received within the 4 weeks time limit. As you can see this item has now appeared in the 'News' section of Righsnet. I will be making further representations on this but would like to 'brandish' the actual Ombudsman's report to get the LA moved on this. So if anyone has the name of the case I'd be grateful.

The reference for the ombudsman report is Complaint numbers 01/A/01770 01/A/01969.London Borough of Islington

I got this reference from the author of the Housing Direct article
and the report from the Ombudsman's Office Hardly new its dated 14.11.02.

I can e-mail the full report for anyone who wants it.

I attach the report summary below



Report Summary

An Advice Agency complained to the Ombudsman on behalf of Mr North and Mrs South about the way the Council decides whether there has been an overpayment of housing benefit; how it decides whether the payment is recoverable; and how and when it recovers the overpayment.

The law is quite specific about the process the Council has to follow in deciding whether there is an overpayment of housing benefit and whether the overpayment is recoverable. The law also lays down what information should be included in letters to claimants notifying them of the overpayment and that the Council has decided to recover it. The Ombudsman recognises that designing letters that meet the relevant Regulations and are understandable is a problem for all authorities.

However, even taking the problem into account, the Ombudsman finds that in these cases there was fault by the Council in the following areas:

· the overpayment notification letters failed to meet the requirements of the Regulations and were unclear and, at times, nonsensical;

· the letters were not valid notifications so the Council was not entitled to recover the monies owed;

· it should not have started recovery immediately before the claimants had an opportunity to appeal; and

· it failed to reply to, or replied inadequately, to letters querying the overpayments.

The Ombudsman finds that these faults amount to maladministration, which caused injustice to Mr North and Mrs South. Both complainants have been caused distress by the Council’s actions and have been worried about whether or not they owe money to the Council.


The Council has acknowledged the faults identified and offered to remedy the injustice caused to the complainants. But as transparency and accessibility of notification letters is a matter that should be brought into the public domain, the Ombudsman completed his investigation and issued this report. In doing so he recognises the importance of the work being done by a project group of local authorities to improve the standard of notification letters.

He recommends the Council should take the following action:

· it should send a letter of apology to the complainants;

· it should pay compensation of £550 to Mr North and £575 to Mrs South;

· it should report back to him in 6 months time on the position regarding the project group and its own work done locally to improve overpayment notification letters;

· it should arrange for a senior officer to review Mr North’s and Mrs South’s claims for the periods concerned to ensure that any overpayments wrongly recovered are reimbursed; and

· it should review its policy on when to start recovery of overpayments and report back to him on this within 3 months of considering this report.

It might be a case I referred to them. Do you want to email me your number and I'll you ring.

tony.weight@tht.org.uk

Other cases, orderable from the Ombudsman's web site, include 93/B/2197, 99/A/2393, 01/c/16273, 01/B/17404, 01/A/01770 and 01/A/01069. See also decisions R(S)2/74, CIS 2654/99, R(SB)5/91 in which it is suggested that a decision does not exist until the appeal process has been exhausted. This information is taken from my "Overpayments Manual" available from www.hbhelp.co.uk