Summary: We will not investigate this complaint about the recovery of housing benefit overpayments. It was reasonable for Miss X to appeal to the independent benefits tribunal about the overpayment amounts. There is insufficient evidence of fault in the way in which the recovery is being undertaken by the Council.

The complaint

1. Miss X complained about the Council recovering housing benefit overpayments from her earnings and the amount of benefit being recovered in the overpayments. She says he paid back a substantial amount by benefit deductions in previous years and queried the amount outstanding.

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The Ombudsman’s role and powers

2. The law says we cannot normally investigate a complaint when someone can appeal to a tribunal. However, we may decide to investigate if we consider it would be unreasonable to expect the person to appeal. (Local Government Act 1974, section 26(6)(a), as amended)
3. The Social Entitlement Chamber (also known as the Social Security Appeal Tribunal) is a tribunal that considers housing benefit appeals. (The Social Entitlement Chamber of the First Tier Tribunal)

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How I considered this complaint

4. I considered information provided by the complainant and the Council.
5. I considered the Ombudsman’s Assessment Code.

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My assessment

6. Miss X says the Council started direct attachment of earnings to recover overpaid housing benefit from her employment in December 2020. She says she has been paying off a large overpayment which was created in 2010 following undeclared changes in her benefit in 2008.
7. She says the debt should be lower than that claimed by the Council and that the amounts taken from her earnings are too high. The Council says there was still a debt of over £2800 when her claim ended, and it could no longer recover from her benefit payments. This is now being recovered by an attachment of earnings because she did not agree to any arrangement to reduce the amount owed.
8. A further overpayment was created in 2020 following a different undeclared change in income but this is not currently being recovered from her earnings.
9. We cannot determine whether an overpayment of benefit is correct as this is the role of the independent first tier benefits tribunal. It was reasonable for Miss X to appeal the overpayments in 2010 and 2020 if she believed they were incorrect, but she did not do so and agreed to deductions from her benefit.
10. The Council followed the correct procedure when applying for the attachment of earnings and the amounts deducted are set by the Department for Work and pensions, not the Council. The Ombudsman has no jurisdiction over the Department for Work and pensions which is a government body.

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Final decision

11. We will not investigate this complaint about the recovery of housing benefit overpayments. It was reasonable for Miss X to appeal to the independent benefits tribunal about the overpayment amounts. There is insufficient evidence of fault in the way in which the recovery is being undertaken by the Council.

Investigator’s decision on behalf of the Ombudsman

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman