UK Landlord Forum / Life

Hi folks

My tenant is on housing benefit and I was getting the agreed rent via the council.  Yesterday, I received a letter from HB saying that because the tenant was overpaid last year, they are going to recover the overpayment by reducing the HB by £10 per week.  This of course affects the rent amount I get because the tenant is refusing to make up the difference..  On top of that, the overpayment refers to the time when the tenant was living at another property – nothing to do with me!

Can I do anything about this?

Thanks

This has happened to us 3 years ago she didn't top up and because the hb payments were paid direct to me I had to pay the council back the over payments! Absolute joke I was out of pocket £1200 I gave her notice got a new tenant

This happens to us all the time with our Housing Benefit tenants. We usually issue an ultimatum that they must pay difference or we serve notice. Most Housing Benefit tenants get their dole money every two weeks, we always ask them to come in and pay a top up every two weeks on the day that their dole money is paid (don't give them chance to spend their money!)

We have also had luck at requesting that the overpayment be recovered from the tenants other benefit entitlements. We send an email to the local authority, we're based in leeds and ours is hb.recovery@leeds.gov.uk - it may be a similar address for your local authority but im sure if you ring them they will point you in the right direction. In the email you have to be very specific about how the tenant is vulnerable, has mental issues bla bla whatever helps fight your case. You then hit them with the fact that due to the tenant being unable to top up their rent you will have no choice but to issue notice on them, a situation which is not beneficial for all parties involved as it will leave a vulnerable person potentially homeless. Basically, just really ham it up!

I had to go and tell our HB that they were paying me too much. The useless idiots can't even work a calculator. Their "vision" on the web site is "paying the right people the right amount at the right time". They didn't appreciate when I pointed out their "vision" was their basic job description. I believe they think their job is shrouding odd decisions in layers of incompetence and bureaucracy whilst taking large amounts of time off to deal with stress and bad backs.

Bitter? Moi?