Recovery of Overpaid Housing Benefits

At Jacobs we are fully aware of the pressure on a Local Authority Benefits Service to demonstrate to inspectors and auditors that you are providing an efficient, secure, and customer focused service that is continuously seeking to improve.

Benefit Services are meeting the challenge of the key performance indicators, however, one key area, which requires dedicated resources and can be labour intensive is Overpayments, which have budget and subsidy implications.

At Jacobs we can help you to improve your collection rates for invoiced overpayments and 'free up' some of your valuable human resources by using proven recovery procedures that we have developed by investing in the latest information technology and a combination of:

Issuing debt recovery letters - we have a suite of up to five letters that can be adapted to meet your requirements i.e. warning of the potential for recovery action to be taken through the County Court;

Proactive telephone & SMS debt Collection - we have a Call Centre that employs 25 full time equivalent staff who are highly trained in debt recovery techniques and make proactive outbound calls and SMS messages during the day, early mornings and during the evening to obtain payments.

Doorstep collection - where the debtor has ignored correspondence or failed to pay an arrangement a visit will be made by one of our experienced doorstep collectors;

Obtaining information - where we have been unable to collect the debt we will provide you with a report and details (if available) of employment, income and expenditure, which will enable you to decide on the cost effectiveness of pursuing a claim to the County Court.

Jacobs can set you up with separate schemes for new and old debt and provide you with on-line access to Client Web that enables you to monitor performance against targets on line.

Where there is a change in circumstances and the option to recover from ongoing entitlement or prescribed benefits is available we do not seek to invoice for commission on the outstanding debt.

In addition to Client Web we will provide you with monthly statistics to enable you to monitor our performance and collection rates.  Jacobs provide this service on a no success, no fee basis at a highly competitive rate of commission.

For more information, Please contact the Business Development Team on 0151 650 4949 or email info@jacobsbailiffs.co.uk.