An Employer's Guide to Direct Earnings Attachments (DEA) for the Collection of Housing Benefit Overpayments

A Direct Earnings Attachments (DEA) has its own regulations which follow some of the workings of a Deduction from Earnings Order (DEO) and some workings of an Attachment of Earnings Order (AEO). A DEA does not replace any of these other orders and you may still receive requests to implement deductions for a DEO or AEO for your employees.

1.1 Your responsibilities

As an employer, you have a legal obligation to:

• calculate a deduction based on the net earnings for each pay date (see section 6: How is a DEA calculated?)
• pay us the amounts deducted by the 19th day of the month following the month the deduction is made
• keep a record of each deduction taken, and the employee from whose earnings it was made

If you fail to comply with your duties, you could be subject, on conviction, to a fine of up to £1000.

1.2 Providing information

a) from Stockton-on-Tees Borough Council - we will send you a notice asking you to apply a Direct Earnings Attachments (DEA) to your employee's earnings. This will include all the information you need to have in order to set up the Direct Earnings Attachments (DEA).

b) to Stockton-on-Tees Borough Council - you have a duty to notify us if:

• we ask you to operate a DEA for someone who does not work for you
• an employee for whom you are operating a DEA leaves your employment
• you are a new business (which starts between 8 April 2013 and 31 March 2014), or a micro business (having fewer than 10 employees), as defined in the Regulations, if you are a new or micro business you are not obliged to operate a DEA although you may do so if this is agreed with your employee
• you must write to us at the address shown on the DEA request letter within 10 days of the date of that letter if any of the above applies to you

c) to your employee - you have a duty to notify your employee in writing of:

• the amount of the deduction taken, including any amount taken for administrative costs. (see section 6 on administrative costs) - if this information is shown on their payslip, it will suffice

You must do this, and record it, no later than the payday after the one on which the deduction for the DEA was taken.

You must, within 28 days of receiving a request from your employee, provide a written explanation of how the deduction has been calculated.

Please contact the Recovery Team on 01642 526820 if you require any further information or help in operating this DEA.