Overpayments of Housing Benefit and Council Tax Benefit

We may have to work out the amount of your benefit again because of a change or because we've found we've made a mistake.

If your benefit goes down and we've already paid you the higher amount there will be an overpayment. The most common reasons are these.

• The time it takes between a change happening, you telling us and us dealing with it. Even if you tell us straightaway and we deal with it quickly it is often impossible to avoid an overpayment.
• You may have given us wrong information.
• You may not have told us something we needed to know.
• You may have been slow to tell us about a change.
• We may have been slow to deal with something you told us.
• We may have made a mistake.
• In the case of Council Tax Benefit, we pay benefit for a whole year (April to March) at the start of the year. It's quite likely that something will change during the year and we find that we've paid too much, or too little, for the rest of the year.

If we've sent you a bill for an overpayment, there are several ways you can pay