She couldn’t believe it at first. Miss Y looked at her payslip and saw a large sum had been taken out of it by Wandsworth Council.
She had no idea why and emailed the council asking for an explanation. It didn’t get back. The next month, the same thing. She contacted the council again. No response.
Eventually she complained to the Local Government Ombudsman – and its report this month outlines the peculiar law that gives the council a right to take your money direct from your payslip, without notice and – incredibly – for a mistake the council itself had made over a decade earlier.
Only when the council went back through its own records to answer her complaint did the reason emerge. In 2016, the council realised it had overpaid her housing benefit. So it started recovering the money through a Direct Earnings Attachment, or DEA: a legal tool that lets councils deduct debts straight from wages, without going to court. That first round – a decade ago – followed the rules. Then the council put the debt on hold and it stayed there, untouched, for nine years.
In 2025, the council reviewed its dormant DEA cases. Hers was one of them and it started the recovery again. It just failed to let her, or anyone else, know.
The council admitted to the Ombudsman it had broken its own rules. It never sent the letter its process requires before restarting recovery on an old debt, and it had simply ignored her emails. Eventually – and it’s not clear if it was the Ombudsman’s inquiries or not that sparked things – the council suspended the deductions, refunded what it had taken, apologised, and agreed a payment plan.
Incredibly, this was entirely legal. The council can chase a housing benefit overpayment for as long as it likes. There’s no time limit: only bankruptcy can put an old debt out of reach. Miss Y’s case (the Ombudsman cases are always anonymised) may also be just one of many: the council says it found her case through a review of DEA cases; it didn’t say how many, or if started recovering debts on them through the same approach.
This isn’t the first time. In 2022, Wandsworth demanded £225 from another resident over an overpayment it said had happened in 2011. For ten months the council insisted the calculation was correct, even though the resident had no way of proving otherwise a decade on. Then the Ombudsman asked to see the correspondence. The council admitted it had never put the complaint through its own process, and cancelled the debt in full.
The Ombudsman found the council at fault in Miss Y’s case too. But because the council had already fixed things (the refund, the apology, the payment plan) before the watchdog got involved, it closed the case without investigating further. It’s a familiar closing note: this spring we counted the six times in a row Wandsworth had promised the watchdog improvement over its housing failures. This commitment is on benefits, a different service, but the same register: the council has told the Ombudsman it is improving how it handles historic debt recovery.
If a DEA lands on your payslip
Before wages can be touched, the council owes you a sequence: a decision with appeal rights (normally one calendar month to challenge it), then an invoice, and only then a Direct Earnings Attachment, and only if you haven’t engaged or agreed a plan.
There are legal limits on how much can be taken. A standard-rate DEA can’t take more than 20% of your net pay; the higher rate caps at 40%. Either way, you must be left with at least 60% of your net earnings.
Ask for the paperwork. Miss Y was eventually given a full breakdown of the chronology and the calculations behind her debt. She asked for a payment plan instead of a DEA – something councils are meant to offer before deducting from wages.
If you find you are one of the other cases pursued by the council for unknown, decade-old debt, complain. Wandsworth’s process runs in two stages, and both cases here show that’s where movement happens. If you’re still not satisfied, the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman is free: lgo.org.uk, 0300 061 0614.
Has a years-old council debt turned up on your payslip? Get in touch.
