CCM15780 - Undisclosed Partners: Recovery of Overpayments from 18 January 2010 - Failure to notify a change in a previous year

In these cases the customer will have made two errors

• They will have failed to notify the change in their household within one month so we can charge a penalty not exceeding £300 and
• Then will then have gone on to finalise one or more years incorrectly by not declaring that their circumstances had changed

In practice we do not charge the penalty for failing to notify the change because there is now also an incorrect declaration.

Where a new, correct claim has now been made we will consider remitting part or all of the overpayment that has arisen but the treatment of the overpayment will depend on whether or not a penalty is to be charged and, if so, under what behaviour. You should follow the guidance as follows

• You are not charging a penalty, refer to CCM15790
• You propose to charge a penalty and the behaviour category is failure to take reasonable care or serious error, refer to CCM15800
• Your propose to charge a penalty and the behaviour category is Negligent, Fraudulent Behaviour or repeat error, refer to CCM15770

Where it takes some years for the error to come to light we may decide to restrict the period for which we go back. Often we will not go back beyond the previous year and so there will not be an overpayment for the earlier years because we have not disturbed the award. Notional entitlement is not calculated for any year that we do not disturb.