DWP Overpayment

I worked for DWP Debt Management for 10 years. You should take this seriously and deal with it now becuase;

a) Benefit debt is not time barred.
b) Once the overpayment is calculated and in the system it will not be forgotton about. If you wife is on benefits then a % of these will be deducted to pay towards the overpayment. If you wife is working then the overpayment will be passed to another department that will request details of your wifes income and expenditure and if a payment plan is not reached then it is highly likely they will arrest a % of wages. This is extremely common for DWP. They will puruse debt until it is recovered. When someone dies in the UK with any outstanding overpayments these are recovered from the estate and take priority over any other claim. Millions of pounds are recovered each year through Recovery from Estates. As someone else has commented, it is best to sort this out now as it will not go away.
c) DWP would not have written to your wife if they did not have evidence of this overpayment. Records are held back to 1980. You can request copies of the calculation and any other evidence, i.e., copies of your wifes signature on claim forms.
d) overpayments can occur and be liable for repayment even if your wife did nothing wrong.

DWP has an extremely high success rate in recovering overpayments. Although many people appeal the overpayment decision only a tiny percentage have the decision overturned.

SteveMetal wrote: »

Thanks for your input Gill, regarding the debts not being time barred, I've seen this listed on a few different debt sites:

Benefit Overpayments & Social Fund Loans

The Department of Work & Pensions (DWP) has 6 years to take action through the courts to recover benefit overpayments and social fund loans. This time starts running from the date of the final decision made on the overpayment and from when the social fund loan was due to be paid. But the DWP are still allowed to make deductions from your benefit for a debt over 6 years old as they don’t need to go to court to do this. This applies to overpayments of benefits such as income support, job seekers allowance, pension credit, housing benefit, council tax benefit and paying back social fund loans.

So it looks like the Statue Barred does apply as they cannot take her to court over this, but they can get the money off her in the future through any benefits she may possibly claim.

Rather than go down the Statue Barred route I shall be sending a letter off, requesting information on the exact dates of this debt and to provide detailed information on how this debt came about, including proof of any overpayments which were received.

She probably will end up arranging a payment plan with them as like you and other people have said, she will sooner or later end up paying for it.

Hi Steve,

The above is correct however please note that where it states 'The Department of Work & Pensions (DWP) has 6 years to take action through the courts to recover benefit overpayments and social fund loans. This time starts running from the date of the final decision made on the overpayment' this means that the 6 years starts from when your wife was notified of the overpayment, i.e., as this was 'when the final decision was made on the overpayment'.

I can understand that if this overpayment dates back to 2002 it can seem ridiculous that they would only be contacting your wife now, however Debt Management have such a backlog that it can sometimes take this long to calculate and make a decision to recover.

I think you are doing the right thing in writing back to them to ask for details of the overpayment and evidence of this.

DWP are very good in agreeing payment terms. They would rather have this being paid off at £10 per month than taking it to court for earing arresstment or deducting from benefits. They will probably ask for a copy of income and expenditure to come to an agreed amount.

Good luck!