I filled in the form for the final award notice for 2012/13 in July ( I think I was about a fortnight within the date to get the final claim returned. WE had much the same income as last year (just below £40,000), and no surprises we hadn't told them about, so relaxed.
We received the final award notice a month ago (mid-September), and it said we'd been overpaid, so would have the overpayment clawed back from now on. When I looked at my copy of the form I sent in (thank goodness I make copies!), I'd filled it in stupidly wrong...I'd put down DH's salary in the box where it asks for his Social Security Benefits (he doesn't claim any), and added his salary to my Carer's Allowance and wrote that in the box for his salary, so it looks like he received about 2 grand less than his salary in taxable SS benefits, as well as an inflated salary.
DH rang them that day, and explained my mistake. The person he spoke to agreed that it was obvious from the calculations what I'd done, and that it was an error filling in the form, took the correct details down and said they'd be in touch.
Two weeks later, we received another, identical 'Final Awards' notice, saying we'd been overpaid. I rang again, and was told that this letter was a mistake, and I should ignore it and wait for the letter that would let me know the decision of the 'decision maker' who was looking into it...apparently, because it was a 'final' award, it had been 'closed', and needed to be looked at by someone other than the person on the phone.
Today, I got a letter saying that they won't change the decision because I'm not allowed to change the amount given as a final salary after the closing date in July.
HELP!!! What do I do now? This is like being in a Kafka novel! I obviously need to appeal, but how? And what do I say? I feel as though the mistake was so obvious, anyone looking into it would see immediately that what I'd written down wasn't possibly correct.
I'm sitting here feeling very, very sick...