Overpayment recovery from benefits
Sometimes the payments that you get will not be the same amount that your award letter says you will get. This may be because you have been paid too much benefit in the past.
If you have been paid too much benefit in the past, we can recover the overpayment by reducing the amount we pay you now. We can also reduce the amount we pay your landlord.
The amount we can recover each week has been set by Parliament as follows: (April 2008)
- if your overpayment is because of fraud, we will recover at £12.00 per week
- for other overpayments, the standard rate of recovery is £9.15 per week
- we can also increase the overpayment recovery by half (50%) of
- your earnings disregards
- regular charitable income you may have
We cannot reduce your benefit to less than 50 pence per week
If we are recovering an overpayment from your current benefit, you will fall into rent arrears. It is your responsibility to make sure you pay your landlord the difference.
If the amount we are recovering is causing you hardship, please contact our office on 020 8359 2250.
You can have a look at other methods of overpayment recovery on the How we will recover the overpayment.
