DHP recovery and Sheriff officers

Good morning. My line on repaying DHP was that the RSL was not required to pay DHP if we didn’t apply. One of the LA’s I work with have now sent 3 recovery notices to Sheriff officers who have been hounding out assistants for payments.

Surely the OP is not recoverable from RSL ? These are all payments made prior to the RSL having any advisors in place. It will leave tenants in arrears

ideas ?

dhp are only recoverable on a very limited number of occasions,  either the customer (or person who applied) didnt give the full/correct information about the customers circumstances or the LA made a mistake in awarding the DHP in the first place

I think my starting point would be asking what caused the overpayments? if its the customers income had changed and they failed to treport it gfor a while, thats probably good enough to warrant a request for recovery.

generally, if a customer tells my LA of a change in circs,  and there no further DHP applicable, we end the DHP from the paid to point -  DHP are outside of HB so HB recovery rules dont apply.
regs below for reference

8.—(1) A relevant authority may review any decision it has made with respect to the making, cancellation or recovery of discretionary housing payments in such circumstances as it thinks fit.

(2) Without prejudice to the generality of paragraph (1) above, a relevant authority may, on any such review, cancel the making of further such payments and recover a payment already made where that authority has determined that—

(a)whether fraudulently or otherwise, any person has misrepresented, or failed to disclose, a material fact and, as a consequence of that misrepresentation or failure to disclose, a payment has been made; or

(b)an error has been made when determining the application for a payment, and as a consequence of that error, a payment had been made which would not have been made but for that error.