Blundering council officials wrote to a man shortly after his death, telling him his benefits were being stopped – because he had died.

The family of Leonard Green, who died in February aged 87, were astounded when they opened the letter from Medway Council.

It stated his claim for council tax benefit has been suspended "because of a change in his circumstances".

The letter, addressed to Mr Green (pictured right) at his Gillingham home, went on to state that the reason for the suspension was because the “customer has died”.

Mr Green's son and daughter-in-law, Colin and Janine Green, have been dealing with his affairs because his widow, Gladys, suffers from dementia.

Janine, also from Gillingham, said: "My husband registered his death and was given a number to ring to report his passing to the benefits agencies, to deal with pensions and benefits, that may need cancelling or adjusting so Gladys would still receive her entitlements.

"We thought it was a good idea and saves lots of difficult calls."

However, despite making the relevant calls, a letter still went out to the late Mr Green telling him his council tax benefit had been suspended because he had died.

The letter sent to Leonard Green by Medway Council

"To address a letter to a deceased person is insensitive in itself, and telling him he has died is plain stupid," said Janine.

"Failing to give more information in the letter as to what to do next is also unhelpful and unfeeling.

"My point is if a real person took the trouble to just think for a second instead of generating a standard letter unsuitable for this situation, we may just save someone else from receiving an inappropriate and upsetting communication at such a difficult time.

"Did no one think, who am I writing to here?"

She emailed the council telling them what she thought of the letter.

"I want to shame them into taking note and taking action to improve their customer care," she added.

Richard Hicks, the council's assistant director for customer contact, said: "We have called Mrs Green to offer her and her family our sincere apologies for this most unfortunate of errors.

"We fully understand how upsetting something like this can be and would never seek to cause anyone such distress.

"While the letter was generated by a computer, there is a mechanism in place to stop letters such as these going out so we shall investigate this matter further to find out how this happened as we want to ensure this does not happen again."