Tenant claimed benefits fraudulently – Council reclaiming from us!

Mark - you are correct. Unless the landlord was complicit in the fraud, they must pursue the tenant. Reply on these terms;

We wish to APPEAL against your decision that the Landlord is responsible
for your recent overpayment demand.

You have not explained why the Landlord has contributed or caused this
overpayment and we would refer you to the provisions of Housing Benefit Regulations
101.

Until the appeal has been heard, please confirm that you have stopped
all recovery action.

If they continue, I would refer any appeal hearing to Bill Irvine of HB Advice. He operates a non-win, no fee service - http://www.hbadvice.co.uk/

Hi Trudy, don’t react too quickly. Give it a few days then
write to the Council to acknowledge their letter, letting them know that you are
seeking professional advice and will respond to them within 7 working days. This will show them that you are not afraid of their demands and will react professionally and will not simply roll over for them. It will also add weight to the content your next letter. Then wait a week and send the letter that John Paul recommends. John Paul is well known in the industry as "The LHA Expert". It was interesting to see that Mary Latham sent him a tweet today asking him to comment here. I also invited John to comment by email. Great minds think alike 🙂

I will email you John's contact information. He has very kindly emailed me to let you know that he is prepared to help you free of charge, no strings attached.

John wrote a series of articles here earlier this year. I hope to be able to consolidate the articles into an ebook for download very soon so watch this space. In the meantime, here is a link to the series of articles which John Paul's wrote for us to share with the industry >>> http://www.property118.com/index.php/author/john-paul

Thanks Glenn, I don't know Bill Irvine, sounds like I should, please introduce us.

Note for Trudy - Glenn is also a regular author at Property118, very well respected and trusted in this community, ex-solicitor so he knows the law too 🙂 You're so fortunate to have all these industry experts commenting and giving up their personal time to help you, especially on a Sunday and free of charge. You've obviously touched a raw nerve here. I'm so pleased you are getting this help, a demand for a £26,000 clawback must have been worrying you to death, it would me!

Hi Ben

Presumably, letters such as this will come from a suite of document templates as opposed to being individually drafted, is that right?

If that's the case, I think it makes a lot of sense for Trudy to "quote it verbatim here as that will provide you, John, Paul, Glenn and others the opportunity to help Trudy to produce the best possible response letter.

Thanks for the suggestion, I'm learning a lot from this thread and I'm sure other readers will be too 🙂

Message to all reading and contributing to this thread - please help us to keep helping more landlords by becoming a member/sponsor of the good landlords campaign. Details here >>> http://www.property118.com/index.php/the-good-landlords-campaign/

Whilst this might be an extreme example; this is a classic reason why LL don't wish to rent to LHA LL.
Larger LL who have more robust finances can probably cope with the situation.
Small LL are less knowledgable about these circumstances.
They hear the scare stories and default to save a load of aggro and choose NOT to rent to LHA.
Councils should be prevented from even attempting to recover from a LL UNLESS they can PROVE beyond reasonable doubt in a court of law that the LL was complicit in a fraudulent claim.
Council housing depts complain that LL won't take their homeless; this is a principle reason why we don't!
For the more experienced LL like John Paul this circumstance is just a walk in the park for him..
For a little LL this is an extremely distressing situation to be faced with and they don't have the wherewithall to cope.
Whilst advice to manage this particuar situation is proffered very helpfully by JP this is not a service he could, would or should provide to all and sundry.
The mere fact of having to defend against a £26000 demand from an official body like the council; which if successful would cause the LL MASSIVE financial detriment, is enough to put ANY LL of.
You have to be quite brave to take on a LHA claimant as a little LL knowing this risk exists.
I believe the vast majority of little LL know absolutely NOTHING about this risk.
As if they did they would NOT take LHA tenants.
This situation does NOTHING to assist HB tenants who desperately NEED accommodation, the supply of which is being drastically reduced by LL refusing to rent ot HB tenants.
It is costing councils fortunes in TA when there are perfectly acceptable rental properties that LL are refusing to let to these claimants.
Remove the risk to the LL and then it may persuade the LL back into the market.
Unles there has been complicity by the LL with the tenant to facilitate the fraud then the council should not even send a letter to the LL.
ALL communications should go to the tenant as it is NOTHING to do with the LL.
The problem is the council will rightly suspend the claim.
The LL will then have to evict as the tenant will know it will take months for an eviction to occur.
So who pays the mortgage in the meantime!?
Ans nobody.
Property will be repossessed or taken into receivership before the tenant is evicted.
Is it therefore any wonder why your average little LL refuses to rent to LHA claimants.

This clawback happened to me about 4 years ago without any notice or forewarning if I recall correctly. They just deducted it from other tenants HB payments in one lumpsum. Wonder can I reclaim the money or appeal. It was between £300-500, but it was my mortgage repayment for a month.

Hi Trudy
It is my understanding that they can not pursue the Land lord if the payment went to the Tennant then to you. But if the payment went to the landlord they can. Crazy I know I would argue this and ask for any evidence they have you had any knowledge of this. As someone already said If he moved out and you kept taking a payment then that would have to be paid back.
I think there is some great advice here for you. I would then ask them will they pursue the bank or building Society as you would have passed the money to them to pay the mortgage.
I can not see how they can in force this. It would be great if you could tell Mark how you got on for him to post.

I am not a HB or LHA ecpert but have dealt with a lot of it over the years. As far as I can see the sequence is as follows:-

1. Whoever receives the payment has to sign the clawback acknowledgement. If the claimant it is part of their claim form and process

2. The HB/LHA office always initially attempts to pursue

3. Usuall the agent as half the time the claimant has disappeared or ignores them.

4. The agent has insurance and a lot more to lose anyway

5. Until about I think 10 years ago when new HB Regs were introduced (Mary will know) the HB office could claw back even if they had overpaid because they couldn't add up

6. Then nerw regs limited who they could claim against and what for. But as usual local HB offices decided on theor own interpretation of the rules

7.it is the same as receiving an enforcement oderer for works following a HHSRS visit from an EHO. Once you are named on the Order it is the devil's own job to get the LA to accept it should not pursue you but instead the Landlord.

8. It is the same with HB now LHA

All posts and advice here especially from the experts is correct. Getting the LHA to agree though is another matter. Usually they will wage a war of attrition with the agent (especially) or the Landlord if they have signed the clkawback form.

Hmm. 2 things
1) No wonder the idea of paying to the landlord directly is being promoted then. Although having said that it might make the landlord work as a policeman if they had to think twice on initiating things.
2) Maybe this legal attack on the landlord might be justified generically - as in a landlord could have artifically created the person and situation. I guess a landlord on set up might want to copy passports and get tenants to sign something to state they really are who they say and absolve landlord of anything.
*** So good and bad reasons -- but either way landlords are not policemen nor anti money laundering officials - i think they are landlords - or will landlords one day work for the council like police officers and everyone else does. Yeh, you could have a norfolklandlords, suffolklandlords, powyslandlords, westminsterlandlords sub-council companies generating profit for councils - you could be an empolyee and even get to keep a cut of your own rental income and even go round on the beat in the afternoon with a happy council hat on.