Hi Hope you can help with this one

1) Male aged 18 was claiming IS and HB on grounds of estrangement and FTE.
2) Decided to come off benefits and try working
3) HB and IS notified by client on the 4/7/07 of hours of work, rate of pay and date work commencing.
4)HB continued to be paid and client thought as they had the information HB claim was ok.
5) Letter from LA dated 20/09/07 states they have stopped the claim from the 9/07/07 (yet they carried on paying right up until end of aug 07)and that £180 is recoverable from either the client or the landlord if they cannot recover from the client.
6) I note from other posts both client and the landlord have the right of appeal
7) I also note that HB overpayments have no equivalent to DWP regs on official error - surely there is a case to argue here? To notify the client 2 months later that they have overpaid them seems ridiculous - when the client behaved responsibly and notified ahead of starting work. He is only a young lad who suffers with dsylexia, dsycalcula and co-ordination problems. He thought as he had told them and they continue to pay him it was ok.
I was originally thinking no recovery on grounds of offcial error but thats been blown out of the water after reading the posts on here - client is now back on IS as he found the whole situation too complicated to deal with.
I have an idea to request both client and landlord appeal against recovery and perhaps request the LA to use discretion not to recover as there was no delibrate attempt to de-fraud. If the LA had not been so slow to act there would be no Overpayment to recover!
Any help hints or thoughts - not sure which legislation I should be citing for this one - its been a while seen I have dealt with recovery!
cheers Caroline

Quite a lot here for a post but happy to talk to you. I've emailed you my phone number.

But the basics are:

If the authority delayed dealing with a change of circs, that would amount to an official error.

HB overpayments are recoverable unless:
1. It was caused by an official error (i.e the delay); AND
2. The claimant didn't contribute (e.g. by not including relevant details in his notification); AND
3. It isn't reasonable to expect the claimant to understand he was being overpaid. My usual arguments here are are that it is not reasonable to expect claimants to understand how to calculate benefit given the complex rules regarding applicable amounts, income, capital, disregards, etc. etc; the fact that benefit adminstrators make a considerable number of mistakes themselves; claimants are entitled to expect that the departments will calculate their entitlement properly and accurately.

Overall, sounds like a fine case for challenging the decision. The relevant law is regulation 100 Housing Benefit Regulations 2006.

In addition, might be worth a complaint given the impact on your client. In my experience, LA's routinely recover overpayments without proper regard to the law (I have one on my desk at the moment!!) and, had they have decided this one properly, they might have reached a different conclusion, and your client might still be in work.

...and I thought it was too long to post... lol

Our email isn't working. If you want to chat about your case fax your number to 01189551095.