Client was in receipt of IS, and full HB. Started work, and on Housing Officer calculation (HO employed by landlord of RSL)of HB started paying £10 per week rent. Turned out the estimate was wrong, and should have been paying quite a bit more. Delay in processing HB by LA. Result was large overpayment which has been deemed recoverable.
I am arguing official error, and client unaware there was an overpayment. CLearly though she knew she had some rent to pay, but it was the wrong sum!
Also going for the discretion element not to recover.

Any suggested case law or other advice?

Any help gladly received.

It is not clear (to me) form your post where the o/p has come from.
Did the client inform the HB office that she had started work and come off IS? If so, are you saying that they continued to pay her full HB after they were notified she was no longer iro IS?

Victor

Do you mean that the client should have been paying more than £10pw because the housing officer at the LA calculated the new HB wrongly?

Hi,

If the error was caused by the HO at the RSL then it cannot be LA error (Official) as there was no mistake by the DWP or the Council. This makes the OP recoverable, of course you are right there is discretion not to recover it.

In essence RSLs should be very cautious about providing this type of advice. HB officers at LAs take a considerable amount of training and even then when working on the job full time can make mistakes. The prospects of an RSL HO making a blunder is obviously considerably greater, less training and less exposure to HB. You have to also ask whether the claimant gave full and frank disclosure to the HO at the RSL?

If you are saying that the claimant came of IS and failed to tell the LA in writing then this is always a recoverable overpayment as the claimant has contributed to the error by failing to report the change in writing. As good practice, the LA should also send written guidance to claimants at the start of and during their claim outlining the sorts of changes that claimants need to report and the consequences for not doing so...

Regards
Daren

Sorry for delay. The o/p was caused by IS stopping which was reported to the LA, but they continued to pay full HB. New HB form had been handed in.
The HO asked for £10 per week rent based on the info given. Usually this is good practice because the estimate is usually quite accurate, and the HB processed within a few weeks. Here a mistake was made in the figures given to the HO, and also CHB missed out. Biggest problem was a 3 month delay in the LA processing time.

Sorry - more info would be helpful....

Maybe I've missed something, but the crux is going to be around the reason for the LA delay. I don't see that the LA can in any way be held responsible for the other issues, such as incorrect advice by a third party.

The following also assumes that the o/p is for the whole of the 3 months; otherwise, my observations may be different (substantially).

If the LA delayed due to a backlog, then a delay of 3 months would almost certainly constitute official error. Then, it's down to whether the clmt contributed to the mistake; or could reasonably have been expected to realise etc.....

If the delay was due to the LA waiting for information in order to make a decision, then the LA are on much stronger ground. The LA could argue that it wasn't reasonable to suspend the claim as it may have caused hardship to the clmt. That would not necessarily be an official error <CSHB/0718/2002 - para 42>.

So, to my mind, the question is why did the LA delay?

Regards

The delay was just due to backlog, so the new claim form was not looked at. My slight problem was that this is official error, but as she was paying towards rent (the £1 per week), she was aware of an overpayment, just not the extent of it.

"she was aware of an overpayment, just not the extent of it."

Unfortunately, that's not good for your client. There are a couple of CDs where the issue of "quantifying" was considered. If it was just the amount of overpayment that she was unaware of, then the o/p is definitely recoverable.

CH/1497/2004 (para 9)
CH/1671/2005 (para 14)

There are a couple of other CDs which follow the same line.

However, in CH/3629/2002 (para 10), it *may* be open to argument that the Cmmr found differently. Subjectively, my view is that the Cmmr was somewhat generous to the clmt in this CD - but others would obviously argue otherwise.

Regards

Thanks, this is what I was thinking of, although in the distant past I thought there was a decision that the person had to have some idea of the quantity of the overpayment. I will check your decisions out.

May have to rely on the discretion of LA not to recover in this one.

A particulary brave Local authority may even try to argue it is not LA error in the first place - see CH 0454/05

'It is unrealistic to expect an Authority to drop all other benefit processes to prioritise a notification. I respectfully agree with Mrs Commissioner Parker who said that it was not official error for an Authority to fail to suspend payment so soon as information indicative of overpayment or possible overpayment was received. I would consider there was official error if the delay was particularly protracted, but taking into account the holiday period, I cannot find that that was the case here'.

I don't think the LA has much of a chance arguing a 3 month delay was not LA error.

I did say it would be a brave authority, but it is worth bearing in mind that in the case quoted the delay was around 7 weeks.

Can't find CH/3629/2002. Anyone with a copy?
Thanks