Mother in Law has been diagnosed with dementia recently. To be honest she's been getting more forgetful for a number of years but we only now managed to get a diagnosis.
We set up POA 7 years ago so we have now had to enact that and she has requested we take control of her finances as she is just so confused by it all.
Now to the issue - now we have access to her bank we can see she has been massively overpaid by HB and CT benefit.
As an elderly widow she had nothing when she claimed 15 years ago but she lives very simply and has accrued over 30k in the bank which of course means she is no longer entitled to benefits and hasn't been for ages. She owns half her house and pays rent on the other half which is what the payments were for.
I have contacted the local authority quoting the POA and asked to stop the payments twice. They have acknowledged my emails but are still paying her...
What do we do next? She is way too far gone to understand the situation and I am at a loss what to do from here.
Obviously we can pay back the overpayments (I think) but I don't know where to start as local authority seem to be ignoring me.