Housing Benefit Overpayments
Thinking of contacting us about your Council Tax or Housing Benefit?
You can use the Citizen Access Benefits portal to:
- make a claim
- view your claim and letters
- view your housing benefit entitlement
- tell us about any changes
If you get too much Benefit it is called an overpayment. We recover all overpayments unless they are caused by an official error, and we could not expect you to know you were being overpaid.
If you cannot afford to repay your overpayment in full you will need to contact us. We will then tell you your repayment options, you might have to complete an Income and Expenditure form which will be sent to you on request. In some cases we may refer you to Step Change Debt Charity for further advice.
If you are working we may claim back the overpayment through your employer. Further information about how we will do this can be found in our DEA section for employers.
If you have a Housing Benefit overpayment and you are then moved onto Universal Credit. The overpayment will be passed over to the DWP. Arrangements will then be made to recover the overpayment via deductions from Universal Credit.
For further advice please visit our Universal Credit information page.