What if I don't tell you about my changes?

If you don't tell us about a change we will go on paying the same rate of benefit as before and this may be wrong as we may need to change the amount we pay you or stop your benefit completely. If you don't tell us or are slow to tell us, we may have paid too much.

If we do pay you too much:

  • we will expect you to pay it back
  • we may recover the money out of the housing benefit you are getting after the change has been actioned
  • if you have been overpaid council tax benefit we will take the money back from your council cax account and send you a new bill.

If you take more than a month to tell us of a change that would give you more benefit, we can only increase your benefit from the date you told us.

If there are strong reasons that explain why you didn't tell us in time, we may be able to pay the extra money from an earlier date but this will not be common.