I have a client who moved into proivate rentated accommodation and made a claim for Benefit, the landlord received a letter stating that his payment will be reduced by £59.84p per week under section 16 of the social Security Administration (Fraud)Act 1997 to recover said HB.

Client/landlord says it is official error and although I can argue this easily, wonder if Fraud is not proved can I argue that they cannot do this?

Any ideas?

Seeing client tomorrow, 22.7.2004.

As a social policy idsdsue it seems councils are keen to recover overpayments as quickly as they can. Using any means at their disposal, including recovering before appeal has been heard.

A bit of the heading of your message has got cut off but I think that the authority is using what is commonly known as "blameless tenant recovery". An overpayment has arisen in respect of a claim from another tenant and they are using their powers under the legislation you have quoted to recover it from the benefit of your client.

If they were recovering an op from a claimant, there would be statutory limits on the amount which they could deduct from that tenant's ongoing benefit, but I do not think this applies under blameless tenant recovery. The important point is that your client is held to have discharged his rent liability to the value of the weekly amount being recovered, meaning that the landlord cannot pursue him for this amount.

If the recovery rate is causing problems for the landlord he can argue for a lower rate of recovery, and the council is obliged to take all the circumstances into account. The other point to make is that the practice of recovering anything when an appeal is outstanding is generally regarded as 'bad practice'(certainly by the LG ombudsman).

Thanks for that, very helpful.

Gary