Housing benefit repayments for landlords

If payments are being made directly to you as landlord and they were overpaid because of information that you failed to provide, you may be required to repay the overpayments to us in the following ways:

1. Invoice for full and immediate payment.
2. Ongoing benefit deductions from future direct payments of your tenant’s benefit.
3. Blameless Tenant Recovery. Under the Social Security Administration Act 1997 Section 16 we can invoke these powers to have your tenants’ direct payment reduced to recover the overpayment. You cannot recover such a reduction by asking a ‘blameless tenant’ to pay more rent.

The longer a failure to report changes in circumstances goes on, the more serious the effects of repaying the overpayment will be.

You might be committing benefit fraud if you choose not to report a change in circumstances.