[2025] UKUT 125 (AAC)

We can take the relevant factual background fairly briefly from the FTT’s key findings of fact, none of which are disputed on this further appeal to the Upper Tribunal.

On 18 January 2018, the second respondent (who will we refer to from now on as the “the tenant”, even though the undisputed basis of the decision under appeal is that she had moved out of the relevant property she was renting) was granted a tenancy of a flat in the London Borough of Ealing (“the flat”) by Capital Housing Association Limited (“the landlord”). The tenant was subsequently awarded housing benefit in respect of that tenancy by the London Borough of Ealing (“Ealing”). Importantly, the award of housing benefit was paid directly to the landlord.

In early December 2018 Ealing received a telephone call from the tenant in which she stated she had vacated the flat. The FTT found that the tenant had in fact ceased to occupy the flat as her home on 29 November 2018 and that the landlord was immediately aware of this fact. The tenant’s award was suspended by Ealing on 24 December 2018 and the landlord was informed of this. On 24 January 2019, Ealing reinstated the tenant’s award of housing benefit and a letter was issued to the landlord to this effect. Further to this, on 11 March 2019 a system notification letter was issued by Ealing to the landlord stating that the tenant’s housing benefit for the flat had been re-assessed and the benefit would be paid directly to the landlord. Another system notification letter to the same effect was issued on 9 March 2020.

On 29 July 2021, the landlord contacted Ealing by telephone to state that the tenant had vacated the flat on 29 November 2019 (sic) and that an email to that effect had been sent by the landlord, to Ealing on 27 May 2020. Following this telephone call, the tenant’s award of housing benefit was suspended with effect from 29 November 2019. Ealing then noted, through a check of its council tax records, that the tenant had in fact moved out of the flat on 29 November 2018, and not 2019 as the landlord had stated. As a result, the award was further suspended back to 28 November 2018.

By its decision of 31 July 2021 (as subsequently revised on 16 December 2021, though that revision is not material for the purposes of the issues on this further appeal to the Upper Tribunal), Ealing made the following five decisions (as identified by the FTT):

It was this 31 July 2021 decision (as revised) which the landlord appealed to the FTT. We emphasise that Ealing’s decision included that the recoverable overpayment was recoverable under regulation 101(2) of the HB Regs from both the tenant and the landlord.