Guidance

Housing Benefit and Council Tax Benefit overpayments guide

This guide is for the administration of the Housing Benefit and Council Tax Benefit schemes by Local Authorities and Housing Authorities in Great Britain.

This publication was withdrawn on

This guide is no longer current. We have replaced it with the Housing Benefit overpayments guide from 27 February 2015.

Documents

What is an overpayment

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Classification and recovery

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Calculation of overpayments

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Recovery of overpayments

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Decision notices

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Appeals

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Courts and civil proceedings

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Case law and regulations

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Subsidy

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Good practices

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Details

This guide gives information and advice about:

  • all aspects of Housing Benefit overpayment
  • all aspects of excess Council Tax Benefit
  • the legal requirements on local authorities.
  • administering HB overpayments and excess CTB

This guide provides advice, and is not intended to be an authoritative statement of the law – the relevant provision of the Social Security Contributions and Benefits Act 1992 and Social Security Administration Act 1992, as amended, and the regulations and orders made under those Acts are the formal statements of the law.

It includes full guidance on the following issues

  • what is an overpayment
  • causes of overpayments
  • classifying overpayments
  • how to decide if an overpayment is recoverable
  • calculating overpayments
  • underlying entitlement
  • calculating change of address overpayments
  • diminution of capital
  • who to recover overpayments from
  • methods and rates of recovery
  • when should recovery commence
  • administrative penalties
  • write offs

We have also published a good practice guide for local authority staff on recovering Housing Benefit overpayments.

Published 28 August 2013
Last updated 17 February 2015 + show all updates
  1. Added revised HB Overpayment Guide parts 1 to 7.

  2. First published.