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

3.1 The notice from the Council

The Council will send you a letter (officially called a notice) which tells you to apply a Direct Earnings Attachments (DEA) for your employee and gives you the information you will need in order to apply it. This includes:

• the name and address and national insurance number of the person from whose wages you will make the deduction
• if we have it, their staff number, pay roll number or similar identifying number
• the percentage rates at which deductions are to be made (section 6.2)
• the proportion of their wages which is protected (section 6.2a)
• when to send us payments (section 13)
• details of the account into which the payments are to be transferred if you are paying us by automated credit transfer (section 13.1)
• the address to which you are to send the payments if you are going to pay by cheque (section 13.2)

3.2 The deductions

Once you receive the notice, you will need to check that your employee earns enough to allow a deduction to be made. If they do, you then calculate how much to take from their earnings using the information provided by the Council and make the deductions.

3.3 The payments to the Council

Once you have taken the money, you must pay it over to the Council within set time limits. We will ask you to make payments in line with your payroll, so if your employee is paid weekly or monthly, you should pay us at the same time.

However if your employee is paid weekly you must still calculate and deduct the payment every week, but you can pay us 4 weekly if you prefer. Please let us know if you will be doing this by telephoning 01642 526820.

It is your responsibility to ensure you take the right amount from your employee's earnings each week or month and pay it to us.