I have a client that is being sued in the County Court for recovery of approx £10k in overpaid TC, covering 2 seperate financial years. Only came to me when summons issued. Claim issued for recovery of overpaid TC under S29(3) TCA 2002.

1st period 2003/4

Official explaination is that client, from the award notices, should have been aware that the award notice showed hours of work, but nil income for the period, and the DWP have said that to their system "it would not have appeared incongrous that hours were declared but no income"

I have asked for copies of the original application form to see if i can argue official error (not yet provided), but am aware that I may be on a losing wicket.

Client does not have all the papaerwork, nor copies of letters he sent to IR.

Second Period is 2004/5 When IR say client failed to return S17 and award was terminated. I have asked them to look at the true loss to the public purse, and there by reduce the overpayment, without success at thias stage.

County Court have accepted, at this stage, that there is a defence.

Any help/ suggestions

Thanks

Have you phoned welfare rights priority line to ask them to read contact history page for the summer of 2005 to see if annual declaration details were actually given? I have seen numerous S17 terminations of claims and subsequent overpayments where the client did in fact, phone the helpline and give the annual income figures required. There is some sort of computer error called an F-clens error that appears on many cases, where a client does report income details, but the computer won't process them.

Also, it would probably be useful if you checked the actual amounts of the overpayments against the years because where there is an S17 termination an overpayment is created in 2 seperate years, i.e. for 2004/05 year annual declaration should have been returned in summer 2005. If it is not returned then all payments made from April 2005 until the termination occurs are deemed an overpayment and also full year award for 2004/05 is deemed an overpayment. So has the 2003/04 overpayment actually resulted from non-return of annual declaration in summer 2004, making overpayment for the two years you have stated?