Housing Benefit Overpayment Recovery Service

From April 2018, local authorities (LAs) will have access to DWP's Housing Benefit (HB) Debt service. The service will provide LAs the opportunity to match outstanding HB debtors to Real Time Information on HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) employment and pension data.

Pilots of the service have shown that, of the cases matched, 65% were returned to the authorities with up-to-date employed or self-employed income information, suggesting a voluntary repayment or Direct Earnings Attachment (DEA) could be made.

While this provides an opportunity to maximise income for outstanding HB overpayment debt, for many authorities it will result in an unplanned spike in workload, adding an extra burden on resource.

Are you ready?

To support you in managing the workload increase and to alleviate pressure on your current resource, we've developed a service utilising skilled and fully-trained staff working remotely to validate data and set up Attachment of Earnings promptly; effectively recovering outstanding HB overpayments.

Data is returned with employer information appended (if applicable). Self-employment details are supplied (if applicable), in addition to any possible change in address or contact details.

What can you expect

• Flexibility and scalability – you can scale the service up and down as your requirements change over time
• A cost neutral service – with Civica maximising the amount of outstanding debt you recover
• Fully trained staff
• Fast set-up

Want to know how much you could recover?

Complete the form below and we’ll estimate how much you could recover and the impact processing these cases will have on your workload. We'll be in touch to discuss the results with you.  

If you don't have caseload statistics to hand but are interested in knowing more, simply complete your contact details below and we'll contact you.