My benefits stopped when I went into hospital....

I'd just come out of hospital. Imagine my shock when I got a letter saying I had to pay back my income support! Find out how I dealt with my benefit problems.

Mr Trivedi is aged 55 and lives in Essex

I’ve got health problems, including a heart condition. My health problems mean I can’t work, so I’ve had to claim benefits. Last year I had a problem with my claim for income support:

My health got worse in June last year. I’d entered the local fun run when I started having chest pains. I ended up having to go into hospital for a couple of days while they did some tests.

I was fine after that and I went home. Unfortunately, a few weeks later I had a heart attack. I was rushed into hospital for a heart bypass operation and this time, I was in hospital for nearly a month.

Once I was back at home, I got a letter from the Jobcentre Plus saying that they’d overpaid me income support by over £250 because I’d been in hospital. I thought it didn’t seem right, so went to see the benefits adviser at the community centre.

He told me that sometimes your benefits can get reduced when you go into hospital but that I’d not been in hospital long enough for it to affect me.

The adviser wrote a letter explaining what had happened and saying I wanted to appeal. He told me that once they got the letter, someone at the jobcentre plus would look at my case again.

A couple of weeks later I got another letter from the jobcentre plus, it said they’d changed their decision and my overpayment had been reduced to about £170.

I still couldn’t afford to pay this, so I took the letter straight to my adviser. He said that it looked like they’d still made a mistake about the length of time I was in hospital. He said that because the decision had been changed in my favour and the overpayment had been reduced, I’d have to make a fresh appeal against this new decision.

I asked for an appeal against the new decision and eventually the whole thing got sorted out at the appeal hearing. The hospital gave me a letter saying what dates I had been an inpatient. The tribunal agreed that my income support wasn’t overpaid, so now I don’t have to pay anything back. It’s a huge relief!