The council is clawing back hundreds of “energy boost payment scheme” overpayments that were made by mistake.
The clawbacks come as the council-run scheme to help people with rising gas and electricity bills has come to a close.
Brighton and Hove City Council said that almost 110,000 households – out of 121,540 – received a £150 payment, totalling more than £1.6 million.
The money was paid directly to residents’ bank accounts or credited to their council tax account.
But almost 900 people received overpayments, with clawbacks expected to affect more than 300 of them.
The council said: “Inevitably, as with other large-scale government schemes we have administered, there has been a small degree of error despite our best efforts.
“Government guidance states that we must make ‘reasonable efforts’ to recover the money where money has been overpaid.
“We will be invoicing 322 residents asking for repayment of the money sent. This is around 0.3 per cent of the number of awards made.
“There were various reasons behind the payments made in error, including
- The fluid nature of council tax changes meant we were constantly updating accounts
- Customers not telling us about their change in circumstances, which meant they were not eligible, until after the payment was made
- Non-resident landlords of HMO properties incorrectly being identified as resident in the property.
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“The main reasons we’re looking at in our decisions to recover include
- House of multiple occupation (HMO): The landlord has incorrectly received the payment for the property (83 cases)
- Not in residence on 1 April 2022: The resident wasn’t in occupation on 1 April 2022, so is therefore not entitled to the £150 payment (200 cases)
- Second Property: The payment was made to a second property and the payment can only be made to the main residence in occupation (16 cases)
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“If the customer is unable to repay the £150 in one payment, they will be able to set up a repayment plan.
“We are taking hardship into account before we seek repayment of the incorrectly paid awards.
“We have written off 569 other overpayments where we have identified benefit entitlements or circumstances that warrant a hardship consideration.
“If, in the process of recovery, we identify previously unknown hardship, we will apply the same exclusion criteria.
“We need to start recovery straight away before the associated administrative funding is exhausted. We will be writing to overpaid customers in weekly batches of up to 100, beginning this week.”
