Terms & Conditions

[Anonymous]

Hi
Sutton are looking at setting up a Corporate Debt Recovery Team and want to include the recovery of HB overpayments.

Currently, we use Iworld Debtors and I have 3 officers recovering HB debtors.

We’re currently going through a consultation period and I would be interested to hear about anyone’s experiences of working in a Corporate Team recovering HB debt – good and bad.

I’m having difficulty seeing how this could work due to the complex nature of HB legislation but would be grateful for any comments/suggestions/experiences etc.

Thanks
Malcolm

[karent]

don’t do it! Our HB overpayments used to be recovered with a Corporate Debt team who gave it SUCH low priority………..that it failed miserably and the Benefits team ended up dealing with all of the enquiries cos the second somebody said ‘remind me how i was overpaid’…….back to us it came………

For the last 3 years we’ve had a dedicated Overpayments team within Benefits & it works SO much better – the staff are Benefits staff who are fully trained in both Benefits legislation and recovery law & our debt is slowly being ebbed away by the tide of payments coming in

[Anonymous]

It would depend at what point the debt is passed to your corporate team. Although overpaid HB is not a contract debt, and there are particular rules relating to how judgement is obtained, once the money is owed on invoice the recovery procedures are the same for any county court debt. You would just have to make sure that all other avenues for recovering the debt have been exhausted first. This, as you say, is specialist knowledge.

[Author]

Posts