Overpayments
An overpayment is where you have been paid more Housing Benefit or Council Tax Reduction than you are entitled to.
An overpayment may be caused by a change in your circumstance that you have not told us about in time.
Examples of things that can cause overpayments are:
- An increase in your income
- Someone moving in with you
- You moving out of the property
If an overpayment arises, we are duty bound to try to get the money back. If you have been overpaid Housing Benefit, it will normally be recovered directly from your ongoing entitlement to benefit at pre-set weekly rates. If it is an overpayment of Council Tax Reduction, an increase will be made to your Council Tax bill so that you can pay the money back as part of your account instalments. If you no longer qualify for Housing Benefit in Moray an invoice will be sent to you and you can make arrangement to repay the debt in instalments with our overpayment section.
Even if the overpayment isn’t your fault you may still be required to repay, for example if the Council could reasonably expect you to know you were being overpaid.
If you let us know that you are having difficulties making the repayments, we may be able to arrange to recover the debt over a longer period of time.
You have one calendar month from the date you are notified about the overpayment in which to make an appeal. You can only appeal against the calculation of the overpayment and the
recoverability of the overpayment. Recovery of a Housing Benefit overpayment will not start until this appeal period has ended. However, a Council Tax Reduction overpayment will be recovered immediately.
Please do not ignore our letters as the debt will not go away. If we do have to take further action to recover the money through the courts, the amount you owe will increase.
GDPR
The General Data Protection Regulations determine how we handle personal data and increase the level of protection for individuals. The Regulations came into effect on 25 May 2018.
Telling people how we use their personal information is a key part of GDPR. A Privacy Notice tells you how we do this. This includes how we collect, share and use your information.
Click on the link below to read the