Overpayment of Income Support (£9k)

midnight_express

You should have declared your earnings on a weekly basis so that they could be deducted from your benefit. If you didn't do this an overpayment will have arisen. Not declaring earnings is fraud for which you can be taken to court and go to prison.

Dunroamin

iwillbedebtfree wrote: »

Well that's exactly my point, they haven't given me anything to show overpayments. The letter this morning states it was from 2001-2005. During this time (really testing the old memory here, I attended 2 different colleges & worked weekends when possible but not exceeding their 16 hour rule).

It's not so much the matter of how many hours you work but of what you actually earned. Did you declare your earnings and were these deducted from your IS?

ETA
What age were you in 2001/2005 and were you studying full or part time?

Sixer

Hi OP.

I think this is the problem:

If you had ever got a job for over 16 hours, you would have had to END your claim for Income Support.

That's what is meant by not working for more than 16 hours.

Even though you could work for less than 16 hours, you still needed to declare this to DWP as, in the weeks that you earned money, the amount of Income Support you were entitled to would have been less, depending on what you earned.

If this is the case, you can't really appeal further. Ignorance of the rules isn't a defence. There is no time limit for the DWP to claw back overpayments.

Hope this helps; sorry it's likely to be bad news.

iwillbedebtfree_2

Thanks for your reply Sixer.

I will contact DWP Monday

Arg

HappyMJ wrote: »

I would say it is because the OP disagrees with the claim for overpayment as can be shown by the appeal knocking many thousands of the alleged debt.

Thousands of pounds of fraud from the DWP, who's to say the rest isn't too.

rogerblack

Arg wrote: »

Thousands of pounds of fraud from the DWP, who's to say the rest isn't too.

Thousands of pounds that the DWP believe was overpaid.
This is not quite the same as thousands of pounds of fraud.

It sounds like the OP may have been entitled to much of this money, if they had been keeping the DWP informed of their status, and possibly reapplying for benefit after they lost their entitlement for whatever reason.

In addition, depending on what they were told, grounds for it being not repayable due to the OP being misadvised may exist.