How we recover Housing Benefit from a tenant
We will recover the overpayment from future benefit payments. We will do this by a weekly deduction known as a 'claw-back'.
If the landlord receives the payments, we will reflect your reduced entitlement by the amount of the benefit payment. This is every 4 weeks.
You must pay any rent arrears that occur because of the reduced amount paid to the landlord.
If you are overpaid Housing Benefit we will write to you and tell you:
- what your correct benefit is
- why you were overpaid
- how much the overpayment is
- the period it covers
- how the overpayment should be repaid
- how you can appeal if you think it is wrong
If you’re not receiving Housing Benefit, we may recover the overpayment from other benefits. We may issue an invoice for payment.
Recovery of an overpayment will not prejudice any criminal proceedings taken by us in respect of fraudulent overpayments.
How we recover Housing Benefit from a landlord
If we recover an overpayment from a landlord, we will issue an invoice. We may make deductions from other tenants' benefits paid to that landlord. We do not treat the amount of these deductions as rent arrears for those tenants. The landlord must not try to recover the shortfall from them.
Recovery of an overpayment will not prejudice any criminal proceedings we may take in respect of fraudulent overpayments.
When we might reduce the overpayment
In some circumstances we may be able to reduce the amount we overpaid you if you can tell us about your correct circumstances throughout the period of the overpayment.
If we give you benefit for the period you were overpaid it is called underlying entitlement. If you do have underlying entitlement which means you were entitled to receive some of the benefit, we will use this to reduce the overpayment.