Overpayment UC

Tenant has overpayment of UC for period 13/07/2015 to 12/08/2015 because HB was paid for the same period.

Should the client have been forced to claim UC as he was in receipt of HB?

Not on my reading of Gateway conditions - if already getting HB, not a bar to UC claim

I don’t know details, but is it not possible to argue that the HB was overpaid, and that there was an official error that might make it unrecoverable?

Was 13/7/15 the start of the UC award?  If so this is probably an overpayment of HB caused by migration: to prevent duplicate payments from being made HB has to end immediately before UC begins and any HB already paid beyond that date is treated for UC purposes as income other than earnings tapered at 100% in the same UC assessment period.  At the Council’s end they record it as DWP official error, non-recoverable which means there is no further action on the matter by the Council and they get full subsidy from DWP.

If one or more payments of UC are made before HB has stopped, or at least before DWP is aware of the HB overpayment, I think it does result in an overpayment of UC, although Reg 10 of the UC Transitional Provisions Regs could be clearer on that.  That seems to be what has happened here: DWP has identified the overlapping payments during the AP beginning 13/8, having already paid UC for the AP beginning 13/7.  So they have recalculated UC for the whole month 13/7 to 12/8 using HB as income other than earnings - this will now be recovered as a UC overpayment.  To be on the safe side I recommend checking with the Council that they see it that way too and that they do not propose to take any further action on the HB o/p at their end.