client in receipt of discretionary payments

client's Hb increased to near rent level -seems official error in that discretionary payment not altered (period of about 3 months) - resulting in overpayment

the question is - I havent a clue as to whether this is recoverable or what legislation is involved

I have argued official error and couldnt have been aware of change of circumstances , additionally client has mental health problems

but I am stuck on legal position with discretioary payments - there is no question of fraud or misrepresentation.

any comment gratefully recieved

Nick

(1) Was rent paid direct to landlord or to tenant...

(2) if to tenant, and therefore into bank acct, how often are bank statements issued - if not every month how could client know there was extra money going in?

(3) Would your client's mental health problems result in them not opening any mail that looked official - bank statements etc? (It's not unknown for this to happen and for these to end up in a bin unopened)

(3) Was it a reasonably small amount which could have easily been overlooked?

It is official error obviously, and not recoverable - unless the LA can show that the client was aware that they were being overpaid. Now, there are CD'S which say that a reasonably intelligent person should have been aware of the extra amount etc - in your case that is hardly the case.....

The usual “Official Error” considerations do not apply to DHPs. They are not payments of HB or CTB and the HB and CTB regs do not apply to them. The authority to recover is very broad and contained in the Discretionary Financial Assistance Regulations 2001

Without prejudice to the generality of paragraph (1) above, a relevant authority may, on any such review, cancel the making of further such payments and recover a payment already made where that authority has determined that –

an error has been made when determining the application for a payment, and as a consequence of that error, a payment had been made which would not have been made but for that error