Explanatory note

These Regulations implement provisions of the Social Security Administration (Fraud) Act 1997 in relation to the recovery of overpayments of housing benefit.

Regulation 2 prescribes from which benefits such recovery may be made.

Regulation 3 provides that where the overpayment is being recovered from the landlord of a claimant in relation to whose claim for housing benefit that overpayment arose, the liability of that claimant to that landlord shall nonetheless continue to be discharged to the extent of the overpayment recovered in cases where the landlord has either agreed to pay a penalty as an alternative to prosecution or has been prosecuted in relation to that overpayment and that both that landlord and that claimant shall be notified of this.

Regulation 4 amends Schedule 6 to the Housing Benefit (General) Regulations 1987 (S.I. 1987/1971), which provides for the content of notices of determination. It requires authorities, when determining to make payments of housing benefit to a claimant’s landlord, to inform both landlords and claimants that overpayments of housing benefit due from that landlord, in relation to such benefit paid in respect of other claimants, may be recovered from that landlord by deduction from such direct payments, but that the obligation of the claimant, in respect of whom that benefit is being paid, shall nonetheless be discharged to the value of the benefit that would, were it not for that recovery, have been paid. It also requires authorities, when notifying a landlord that an overpayment is recoverable from him and is to be made by deduction of direct payments made to him, to identify both the person on whose behalf the recoverable amount was paid to that landlord and the claimant from whose directly paid benefit the recovery is to be made.

These Regulations do not impose a charge on businesses.