HB intend to recover an O/P of approx 5 1/2K. the tenants account is in credit to more than this amount and the tenant is happy to repay it, and was via deductions from ongoing benefit, which has now ceased as her income increased

HB now intend to recover from the landlord, but have said they will not send an invoice as "it will cost too much" and intend to deduct it from the general schedule instead.

i shall write to them to ask them to reconsider. but has anyone any suggestions or comments that may help me?

many thanks

I hope I am not being incredibly dense, but surely if they deduct the overpayment direct from your aggregate cheque you can debit the rent account of the tenant to the same value?

And then re-distribute to the rent accs affected by the decreased aggregate cheque.

It is not clear from what you have said whether you object to the method of recovery or the overpayment being recovered from you the landlord.

If the problem is that it would be difficult for you from an admin point of view then I think that you must advise the LA of this and ask them to send you a debtor invoice. Considering the amount of the overpayment and the cost of raising an invoice I do not see what the problem is.

You could just send them a cheque toute suite, debit the rent account of the tenant concerned, and then they will have to deal with the cheque?

I don't understand the issue here either.

If the LA are recovering an overpayment of 5 1/2 K and the tenants account is in credit by more than this amount, why didn't the landlord just repay the overpayment anyway?

If they want to deduct from the schedule, they must comply with all of para 14 of Sch 6, including sub para (1)(f), (the fact of the overpayment and the amount of the deduction) and sub para 2 (the person on whose behalf the recoverable overpayment was paid and claimant A, the person whose rent allowance the amount was deducted)

If an overpayment of £5.5k is being recovered, there will be a number of claimant A's to be identified.

Recovery from the schedule is surely more expensive than sending a bill