Housing benefit overpayment- their fault

[Bamboolampsandscandichairs]

Long story short the DWP contacted my workplace saying they have overpaid me housing benefit (£5000). I had since moved from that address and never took benefits at our new address as we got into a a better financial position. It was really embarrassing for my workplace to send the email to the payroll department and now they’ve set the pace. I only saw the letters now after contacting them and they said that they had made a mistake by putting in the earnings as monthly rather than weekly. We have been completely transparent and notified them of every change. I have been in the same job since and never changed my email or phone number. Surely they could have contacted me some other way?

What was the overpayment for? You can ask them for copies of correspondence they have sent you regarding it, then you'll see where it was sent and when. Basically if you have a overpayment and don't dispute it or pay it back, they can now do an attachment to your earnings to recover the money.

Sorry just seen you said what it was for. So it's their error but in Housing Benefit legislation it can still be recovered if you could have been reasonable aware the assessment was incorrect - so if you could tell from your Housing Benefit letters you received that they had your income in wrong.
Depending when the overpayment was created you may be too late to dispute it (usually a maximum of 13 months after decision) but contact the council that paid you the Housing Benefit.

In 2019 DWP informed me my Carers Allowance claim had been miscalculated between 2012 & 2015.

No indication of it being my fault. Just "miscalculated".

I've still had to pay it back via an attachment of earnings & have roughly 6 months left to go.

I’ve been paying back a UC overpayment for 2 years now after they miscalculated what I was due for a long time without me realising. I don’t believe there’s anything you can do about it; if you’ve been overpaid you have to pay it back no matter whose fault it was.

Housing benefit award letters include all the info that the calculation is based on. If you try and challenge the overpayment, they will simply tell you that it was your responsibility to check the information and tell them if it's wrong.

Bummer though.

Doesn’t matter. Think about it. If you’d paid too much tax to HMRC because you made an error, you’d want to be paid back right? This is no different.

Ime HB change the rules to suit themselves. When my MW lost my Matb1 form I waited 10 weeks for any maternity allowance.. When the large sum hit my bank HB reduced my money to nil as I had a lump sum. Never mind the 10 weeks I had zero and it was backdated money!

That's a bit weird, @PissOffJeffrey. CA is a standard amount @PissOffJeffrey, there's no calculation involved. The only time I've come across CA overpayments is when the carer earns over the limit at which entitlement stops, or the cared-for person stops getting DLA/PIP/AA and the carer's entitlement ends as a result.

Yes, by miscalculated I mean that my income was a different amount each week (zero hours contract) and my payslips were submitted to DWP for them to calculate whether I was entitled to CA or not. Some weeks I earned way under the threshold, others more.

As I was sending them payslips on a regular basis I trusted that I was entitled to CA because they told me I was & paid it to me. Turns out they miscalculated (my income) & I was only entitled to it for part of the claim period.

The weekly amount is a set amount as you say.