I now have two cases where overpayments of tax credits have been fully remitted. Here are the details, in case they can help anyone else:
Client was claiming working tax credit and child tax credit as a single parent until 28/4/03 when her partner moved in with her. Client informed tax credit office of the change of circumstances in advance of her partner moving in. Client completed and returned promptly the forms she was sent (ie to establish a joint claim for tax credits). An award notice for the joint claim was issued on 24th July 2003. Between 28/4/03 and 24/7/03 client continued to receive tax credit payments. Client contacted the tax credit office to query this and was told that she was entitled to these payments until the joint claim was processed. Client then received finalised award notices for period 2003/2004. Client's finalised award notice for her individual claim states an overpayment of CTC of £112.39 and an overpayment of WTC of £483.38. Client came to bureau on 8/7/04 and we assisted with completion of a request to reconsider recovery of overpayment. Client never received a response to this request. Bureau made repeated calls to helpline for updates, with no success. In November client received a notice to pay. Bureau wrote a letter of complaint to the customer services team on 24/11/04. Repeated telephone calls to request a response to this complaint have now produced a letter from Customer Service Team stating the overpayments team "have decided that we have fallen short of delivering a satisfactory level of service when dealing with your claim and have remitted the outstanding amount of £595.77." HURRAH!!! Unfortunately, I have other cases with almost identical circumstances in which remittance has been denied. What makes this one different????
Second case: Red A overpayment case - i.e. that useful little computer bug that calculated thousands of awards incorrectly in June 2004. Client received the usual letter in August 2004 advising her that she had been overpaid £1513.59 due to the computer error. Bureau assisted client to complete request to reconsider recovery of overpayment on 3/9/04. In November client received a letter from the overpayments team stating "the overpayment was not due to a mistake on our part and will be recovered from you" - Obviously completely ridiculous since they had already admitted their mistake caused the overpayment. Bureau sent a letter of complaint to Customer Services Team on 24/11/04. Again, after repeated calls for an update or response we have now received a letter stating, " it has been decided the overpayment in respect of this award should now be remitted." HURRAH!!HURRAH!!. The letter does go on to state, "the remit button on the computer system is not operational at present and until is does become operational we will not be able to physically remit the overpayment." (Couldn't have possibly expected 100% service I suppose).
Anyway, I don't want to look a gift horse in the mouth, but again I have several other Preston, "Red A" overpayment cases in the system, that just keep receiving negative decisions. What makes these two cases so different to all the others I am pursuing?? Can anyone spot the difference?? Or have the tax credit office just looked up the definition of "reasonable" in a new dictionary??
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