CCM8700 - Closing the Examination

Receipt of Cheque - Non Contract Settlement

If, at the conclusion of your examination, you will not be seeking a penalty you will simply be amending the award CCM8110 and any overpaid credits will be pursued by the Accounting & Payments Service. These will not be referred to the Network Unit.

If, before you amend the award, the claimant offers to repay the overpayment you should tell them to wait for the formal notice. They will then be required to make their payment to either the Accounting & Payments Service at Shipley or Cumbernauld. However, it is possible that some claimants will send a cheque to you in the post in advance of the revised decision notice and some claimants, having received a revised decision showing an overpayment might incorrectly send their payment to you.

If you receive such a payment you must send it straight to the appropriate A&PS office (to establish the correct A&PS office refer to Newsboard 375/03). You will need to produce a payslip to accompany the payment and the reference must be shown as 16 characters in the format “AA123456DDMMYYNC” where:

AA123456 = the NINO excluding the final letter
DDMMYY= The award end date
N = NTC case
C = a random check character which will be generated when you produce the payslip

The award end date will be 5 April where the award period is the full tax year, but if the award has been terminated it will be the date from which it is terminated. Two examples of reference numbers are shown below.

Example 1 - The 2003/2004 award has been revised on 1 February 2004 because you established that there were only two qualifying children, whereas the claim had shown three. You are not seeking a penalty so once the award is revised the NTC system will automatically try and recover any credits overpaid up to 1 February from the credits due for the remaining two months. £670 cannot be off-set and this would normally be reviewed at the end of the year. However the claimant sends a cheque to you to clear the debt. If his/her NINO is BB112233D and the random check character is L the reference on the payslip will be shown as:

BB112233050404NL

Example 2 - An examination for 2003/2004 has established that whilst the claimant was single when she applied for tax credits she began to live as part of a couple from 1 September 2003. This was only established in October so on 5 November the award is terminated as of 1 September 2003 but there is no penalty. Tax credits will have been overpaid from 1 September to 5 November and normally this will be reviewed at the end of the year. However, the claimant sends you a cheque for £840 to clear the debt. If her NINO is CC445566B and the random check character is W the reference on the payslip will be shown as:

CC445566310803NW