What happens if you or your tenant has been overpaid.
Your tenants can only make a new claim for Housing Benefit if:
If not they need to claim Universal Credit.
If your tenant has previously received more money than they were entitled to, we will reduce their current benefit payments until the money has been paid back. We will write and tell you about this.
The tenant is responsible for paying any rent arrears that occur as a result of the reduced amount paid.
If we decided that the overpayment is owed by you, we will write and tell you. You may have the overpayment deducted directly through ongoing benefit payments made for other tenants you have, we call this Blameless Tenant recovery. Any recovery made in this way must not be treated as rent arrears for those tenants, and you must not try to recover the shortfall from them.
If you no longer get direct payment we will send you a bill for the amount of the overpayment.
If you cannot pay the bill in full, you may be able to pay by instalments.