What I have learned: Don't listen to anything anyone tells you on the phone/JCP, check facts yourself! OK We have bitten the bullet and arranged to pay them back, very slowly (no interest so I'm in no rush). The 2006 balance was not even mentioned when my wife called back and so we shall let sleeping dogs lie and perhaps tackle that one at a later date if need arises. Thank you to everyone that posted to try and help/make me see sense

Thanks again for your reply. I wasn't aware that Tax Credits could issue penalties! When we submitted the new claim, we were confused as to why we had received the letter from CTC saying that our claim would stop because we thought JCP were updating our details with CTC as we were told. When we spoke to the advisor at CTC to update the claim (5th June) there was no mention of backdating because we did not know that there had been an overpayment (in their eyes) we just thought that we had been getting the right amount of money and to continue doing so we needed to update our details as they hadn't been by JCP as we'd previously been led to believe. The guy on the phone said everything was fine now and that was that, for almost 3 years!

Thanks for the welcome LW The change was my moving in with my partner, although I wasn't working at the time (hence signing on for JSA). 'e' should have been 'we' (edited now) but its funny you should mention both the glens and Yorkshire since I'm from Yorkshire and now live quite near the glens of Scotland! Blondebubbles: if this is the case, then perhaps the problem is not the debt but the lack of backdated pay for the new 'joint' claim which would offset the overpayment and the fact that we were misinformed by JCP advisor. But the fact remains (to any reasonable person) that previous to 25/04/11 she was entitled to ~£100 a week for her children in CTC and after 25/04/11 she was still entitled to the same amount.

Thank you for your quick reply, They ended the single claim on 25th april 2011, not sure when the new one started from but as I understand it, there was no backdating done.

Hi CAG this is my first post. My wife received a letter today regarding £532 which the Tax credits says she is due them because of an overpayment. When we first got together in 2011 I signed on to JSA which we did as a joint claim etc, everything above board and we specifically asked if we needed to tell CTC about it and they said that no, the info goes on the computer and all agencies get to know so that was fine. 5 weeks later we get a letter from CTC saying that there had been a change in circumstances and that we needed to get in touch to continue to receive entitlement, so we called immediately and spoke to a nice chap who took the details and told us that they'd received info from JCP about the new claim etc but needed us to call, which we now had done, everything hunky dory. Now we are asked to repay the money that we got for my wife's children during those 5 weeks. Its not even as if with the new circumstances we weren't entitled. We haven't had a penny that we weren't entitled to, just that we were late (by a week since they give you 4 weeks leeway) in telling them about a change that didn't even affect our entitlement. While on the phone today the irksome character on the other end of the phone cheerfully informed my wife that she also has over £2k overpayment that was made back in 2006 when she was with her ex, which she had no idea about and they have never before attempted to collect although again there had been no periods where she/her ex had earned over £50k to preclude them from receiving CTC. Is there any course of action we can take to try to get someone with a sense of reason so see that we are not guilty of wrong doing and haven't taken any money to which we were not entitled? Or is it just a big money grabbing austerity con?