Government borrowing rose last month, marking the third-highest September since records began in January 1993.

Official figures show that borrowing – the difference between spending and tax revenue – reached £16.6bn last month.

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) said the figure was £2.1bn more than September last year.

This is the last official set of public finance figures until the Budget next week, with the Treasury expected to change its own self-imposed debt rules.

The monthly figure was lower than expected by economists, who had collectively predicted borrowing of £17.5bn for September.

“While tax revenue increased, this was outweighed by increased spending, partly due to higher debt interested and public sector pay rises,” said Jessica Barnaby, deputy director for public sector finance at the ONS.

However, the figure is still higher than was previously forecast by the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR), which monitors the UK government’s spending plans and performance.

IF you get a letter from the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) saying that you’ve been paid too much money, it can be very stressful.

Overpayments can happen for lots of reasons including system errors, changes in your circumstances, and even mistakes made by the government itself.

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The bad news is that if you have been overpaid you almost always need to pay the money back, even if you didn’t notice and have spent it already.

However, you can usually speak to the DWP to work out a monthly payment plan, or there will be a deduction in future benefit payments until the debt is repaid.

The benefit office will determine how much money you should have received, what needs to be paid back, and whether you need to pay a penalty (for instance if you lied about your circumstances).

However, if you think that your payments were correct and you shouldn’t owe DWP anything, then you can challenge the decision. 

We revealed earlier this year that some people are being sent overpayment demands, but after we intervened, it turned out they didn’t owe a penny – so it’s worth checking.

Single mum Penny Davis managed to get a £12,382 bill wiped after she challenged a Universal Credit overpayment demand – and found she was actually owed £2,000.

What to do if you get a letter saying you’ve overpaid

You should get a letter from the benefit office explaining why they think you’ve been overpaid. If you haven’t been given the reasons in writing, ask for them.

If you still think there’s a mistake, start by phoning up the benefit office and explaining the issue.

Give them any evidence you’ve got that supports your belief that you’ve not been overpaid. This might resolve the problem quickly.

If that doesn’t work and you still disagree, you can formally dispute an overpayment by asking for a free mandatory reconsideration. You must do this within a month of receiving your original letter.

You might be able to get an extension in some circumstances, for instance if you’ve been in hospital or had a bereavement.

Don’t forget, someone will look at your whole benefit claim again. This means your benefit could stop, stay the same, increase or decrease.

If you’re not sure, you can contact a charity such as Citizens Advice, Advicenow, or StepChange for help. They can also provide advice if you’ve been accused of benefit fraud. You can also seek advice from a legal professional.

The government says you can ask for mandatory reconsideration if any of the following apply:

• you think the office dealing with your claim has made an error or missed important evidence
• you disagree with the reasons for the decision
• you want to have the decision looked at again

Before making a request for a mandatory reconsideration, make sure you understand why the decision was made. Being clear will help you to explain your case.

If you need help understanding the reason for your benefit decision, call the benefits office. They should be to explain and answer any questions you might have. 

You can ask for a written explanation from the benefits office – known as a ‘written statement of reasons’. You can still ask for mandatory reconsideration after that but must do so within 14 days from when you get the statement.

How to ask for mandatory reconsideration

To ask for a mandatory reconsideration, you need to contact the benefits office. If you get Universal Credit, you can do this via your journal. Other ways to ask for one include by letter, by phone, or by filling in and returning a form.

The contact details may vary depending on which benefit the dispute refers to, but they should be on your overpayments letter.

If you want to dispute a Housing Benefit or Council Tax Reduction overpayment, you’ll need to contact your local authority.

For tax credits or Child Benefit, you need to contact HMRC.

What you need to provide

When asking for a mandatory reconsideration, you’ll need to provide:

• The date of the initial decision
• Your full name and address
• Your date of birth
• Your National Insurance number

You need to say which part of the decision you think is wrong and provide supporting evidence to prove it.

For example, this could be medical evidence or bank statements and payslips. The government says you should only include evidence you have not already sent, and that you should not include general information about your condition or unrelated appointment details.

Make sure you write your name, date of birth and National Insurance number at the top of each bit of evidence so it’s clear it relates to your claim. Unfortunately, you can’t claim back the costs of providing evidence.

If you’re not sure what evidence to send, read the guidance on the form for asking for mandatory reconsideration. You can also ring the benefits office, or speak to a charity or legal adviser.

What happens next?

The benefits office will reconsider its decision about your overpayment. You’ll then get a letter called a ‘mandatory reconsideration notice’ telling you whether they’ve changed their minds.

This letter should explain the reasons for the decision and the evidence it was based on.

If you disagree with the outcome, you can appeal to the Social Security and Child Support Tribunal. This must be done within one month of getting the letter, unless you have a good reason.

This body is independent of government, and a judge will listen to both sides of the argument before making a final decision.  

If you were overpaid

You can usually try to negotiate to make sure that your repayments are affordable.

If you think the repayments will leave you in serious hardship, you should let the benefits office know as they may be able to help.

You can also ask the DWP if it will “exercise its discretion not to recover an overpayment”, which means writing off what you owe.

They don’t have to say yes, and if they refuse you, it can’t be challenged.  You need to give as much evidence as possible about how the payments will affect you and your family.

Even if you have very good reasons, bear in mind it is extremely rare for the DWP to decide you don’t need to pay back the money if you genuinely owe it.

Do you have a money problem that needs sorting? Get in touch by emailing squeezeteam@thesun.co.uk

MUM of two Bryony Lewis has not looked back since getting a log burner fitted in autumn 2022. 

She reckons she’s already saved £2,000 on her bills since switching to burning wood instead of turning her heating on two years ago.

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The 40-year-old, who lives in a five-bed home in Fareham, Hampshire, with her husband, Dan, her son Theo, eight, and daughter, Izzy, six, runs her own e-commerce business, T & Belle, which sells gifts for parents.

That means she spends a lot of time working at home – and over the winter the heating bills rack up.

So a few years ago, she started looking into what she could do to reduce her bills, and found that log burners can be a great way to heat the whole house up for far less.

With energy bills having risen from October 1, when the price cap went up by 10%, Bryony is very glad she made the investment.

This move by Ofgem saw the average annual energy bill jump from £1,568 to £1,717, meaning households are set to fork out even more cash to heat their homes this winter.

Bryony said: “The cost-of-living continues to go up and gas and electricity bills are making an increasingly big dent in our finances. We are very happy we made the decision to find a cheaper alternative to central heating.”

According to Uswitch, the average household with typical consumption could pay around £226 on gas over three months (October to December) based on the current price cap unit rates. 

This is based on regulator Ofgem’s ‘breakdown of usage.’ But note that the cost for each household will vary based on a number of factors, such as type of home, energy performance certificate (EPC) rating, number of radiators and type of boiler. 

After getting a smart meter, Bryony calculated the family was easily spending upwards of £800 on central heating over six months.

How much did it cost to switch?

Bryony paid £800 for her log burner, plus around £1,000 to get it installed – but this included the cost of removing the family’s previous open fire place, so without that it would have been cheaper.

She said: “We paid around £800 for our ACR Woodpecker WP5 Plus – but as we’ve discovered, it doesn’t take too long to recoup the cost.”

Bryony opted for a modern multi-fuel burner, which is a more eco-friendly type that is approved for use in smoke-control areas.

Now, the only ongoing running costs are logs, kindling and firelighters, which has been far cheaper than running central heating.

Bryony said: “For the whole of the winter season last year – from October to March – we spent a total of £100 on those three items,” she said.

One of Bryony’s top tips is to invest in good-quality kiln-dried logs.

“Doing this means the unit gives out a lot of heat,” she explained.

When buying logs, remember to look out for the “Ready to Burn” logo, a scheme that certifies solid fuels for burning in England. 

The only other associated cost Bryony needs to budget for is getting the chimney swept regularly. 

She said: “We last did this last in September and it cost us around £60.”

If you’re looking for a qualified individual locally, the National Association of Chimney Sweeps (NACS) is a good starting point. Also get your burner regularly serviced to keep it in tip-top condition. 

When getting any wood-burning appliance installed, you must always use a qualified tradesperson, such as a HETAS-registered installer.

And make sure you’re up to speed on wood burning stove winter rules – read more here. 

“Even on the coldest days, we only put it on for a maximum of one hour in the morning and the same before bedtime, despite the fact I work from home.”

Other energy-saving measures

Investing in a log burner is not the only energy-efficient change Bryony has made at home. 

“Our smart meter showed me that the oven was another energy-guzzling appliance,” she said.

“So, after researching the alternatives, I invested in an air fryer. This was back in 2022, and we have made really good use of it since then.”
The family went for a 7.6-litre Ninja Dual model. 

“As a family, we do a lot of things to try to be more efficient,” said Bryony. “We take care to always switch appliances off at the plug, as leaving devices on standby can cost a small fortune.”

Figures from Quotezone suggest households could save around £80 a year by switching off  ‘vampire’ appliances such as gaming consoles, computers, laptops, and speakers, as well as dishwashers, washing machines, tumble dryers, microwaves, coffee makers and TVs.

Bryony added: “Other steps we take to save on energy costs include replacing all our lightbulbs with energy-saving ones.”

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Jodie Whittaker’s Duchess of Malfi strides on to the stage in a scarlet cocktail dress and confidently takes hold of a standing mic to sing about desire. She then pours herself a strong drink and waits for her two madly controlling brothers to express their disapproval — which they duly do, volubly and at length. It’s a promising start to Zinnie Harris’s The Duchess (of Malfi), first seen in 2019, which wrests John Webster’s blood-soaked tragedy from the 17th century and relocates it loosely in the early 1960s. Sadly, what follows is a muddle.

There’s potential in a response to the Jacobean original from a female perspective: a chance to give the duchess greater interiority and an opportunity to examine the enduring nature of misogyny and violence. With a setting evoking the Sixties, it could make sense that the duchess’s weirdly possessive brothers, Ferdinand and the Cardinal, would panic at the prospect of greater liberation for women.

But the result is an oddly patchy affair that cleaves closely to Webster’s plot without bedding it into the new context. We don’t get much closer to the duchess and the characters seem to be floating free: the hierarchy that determines their actions in Webster’s time no longer fits and there’s no sense of another society’s pressures to replace it.

That might matter less if the focus were more psychological. Here we see the misogyny but we get no deeper into what drives it: Paul Ready’s Cardinal is an ice-cold sadist and Rory Fleck Byrne’s Ferdinand is snake-mad from the get-go. Harris’s script is brisk and modern, but too often characters flatly state what is going on with them rather than it seeping out of the drama.

Meanwhile Tom Piper’s brutalist set, with its clanging metal walkways, could be a modernist house but also has the feel of an institution, suggesting that society is a prison — or that the whole thing may be unrolling in a psychiatric hospital. Interesting ideas both — the 1960s was a period of disturbing psychological experimentation — but again they don’t feel explored.    

There are moving scenes in Harris’s production. The female characters occasionally express their feelings in song, as if needing to break out of the structure of the tragedy to speak freely. The torture of the duchess evokes war crimes; her slaughter, along with that of her maid and daughter, leaves three broken female bodies on a dirty floor — a piteous sight that speaks for so many domestic murders. They then gently rouse one another to haunt the men, becoming a timeless chorus of battered women. And there’s a touching ending that suggests a path away from toxic masculinity.

But, for all that, and despite Whittaker’s vibrant, warm, determined duchess, it’s an odd, messy affair. It often feels strained, confusing and over-emphatic and, in the end, it fatally misses the tragic power of the original.

★★☆☆☆

To December 20, trafalgartheatre.com