Yes indeed. In most cases the landlord will probably recover from the tenant rent account….as here. The claimant is arguing that the entire overpayment is official error by the Council.
The only other argument I can see is the error was by the landlord and they should be accepting full responsibility, write the rent off and not trying to recover any of it from the tenant. That indeed would be a matter between landlord and tenant and not HB…and one for the Housing or Social Housing Ombudsman via a complaint.
So in writing a submission it is important to try to distinguish between the issues. The FTT is limited to HB issues of course but the claimant will try to get a Judge to sort out everything!
Finally, both the tenant and the landlord MUST be invited to a Tribunal hearing. R (H) 6/06 is very clear that if this is not done in this type of case the decision by the Council must always be set aside and the process started again.
