Cancellation of claim for overpaid housing benefit
CHAC Case study
Deborah’s story
When Deborah moved to Dover and set up her own business, Dover District Council decided to conduct a review of her housing benefit - this included a review of previous housing benefit received from Canterbury City Council and resulted in a claim for overpaid housing benefit of £1491.
The claim for overpayment by Canterbury City Council was made on the grounds that Deborah had exceeded the amount of capital allowed for claiming housing benefit.
How CHAC helped
We had previously helped Deborah with her housing benefit claim when she was the sole tenant of a private rented property in Herne Bay.
We looked back at the advice we had given Deborah in relation to her housing benefit entitlement and prepared a response to the Council. Some of the capital resulted from back payments of Personal Independence Payment (PIP), housing benefit and working tax credit due to the fact that Deborah had won a PIP appeal – money which could be disregarded for the purpose of ascertaining the amount of her capital.
The remainder of the capital was money from Deborah’s grandmother - this was held on a resulting trust and could also therefore be disregarded.
The outcome
Canterbury City Council accepted that the money which Deborah had received was to be disregarded for the purposes of assessing her capital, and the claim for overpayment of housing benefit of £1491 was cancelled.