If Housing Benefit has been overpaid

If you have received direct payments in respect of any of your tenants after their entitlement stops, you may be asked to pay the money back. If you disagree, you have one month to appeal the decision. Your appeal must be made in writing. The most common example of when we will ask you to repay Housing Benefit happens when you have continued to receive Housing Benefit after your tenant has moved. If you have received an overpayment, we will normally recover this money by either:

• reducing payments to you from the tenant's ongoing benefit
• reducing payments to you from other tenants' benefits (this is called blameless tenant recovery; we will notify you which tenant's benefit has been overpaid and who the blameless tenant is)
• an invoice will be sent if neither of the above collection options are viable.