DWP overpayment 14 years ago

midnight_express

Let's hope they are charging you interest.

atrixblue.-MFR-.

midnight_express wrote: »

Lets hope they are charging you interest.

dont you mean lets hope they ARE NOT charging you interest?

DWP seems to be off the mark when it comes to over payments.

in my wifes case they took the over payment first then notified us by letter AFTER we called them about a decline in payment we noticed when it went into the PO account. on the phone they would not tell us what the over payment was when it was or what it was for.


in some cases these decisions and payments refunded after appeal depending on the circumstances of the overpayment.

write a letter and put GL24 appeal at the top of the letter and your NINO address and refrence to the letter you recieved.
state that your appealing the decision to recover money because you do not know why this overpayment has occured, and that you were not given anychance to express your financial circumstances to Agree to a repayment scheme or what benefit you thought would be better to recover the losses from.
that you would like to have this investigated fully, to recieve all documentation relating to and to determin fault of how the overpayment came to be, and untill that time suspend recovery of overpayment untill outcome of the investigation.

benefitbaby

atrixblue.-MFR-. wrote: »

dont you mean lets hope they ARE NOT charging you interest?

DWP seems to be off the mark when it comes to over payments.

in my wifes case they took the over payment first then notified us by letter AFTER we called them about a decline in payment we noticed when it went into the PO account. on the phone they would not tell us what the over payment was when it was or what it was for.


in some cases these decisions and payments refunded after appeal depending on the circumstances of the overpayment.

write a letter and put GL24 appeal at the top of the letter and your NINO address and refrence to the letter you recieved.
state that your appealing the decision to recover money because you do not know why this overpayment has occured, and that you were not given anychance to express your financial circumstances to Agree to a repayment scheme or what benefit you thought would be better to recover the losses from.
that you would like to have this investigated fully, to recieve all documentation relating to and to determin fault of how the overpayment came to be, and untill that time suspend recovery of overpayment untill outcome of the investigation.

The OP should also be aware that the DWP cannot by law (section 71 SSAA 1992) recover overpayments unless it is shown that you failed to disclose something that you reasonably knew would affect your entitlement, or misrepresented your position at the start of your claim.

IB overpayments often occur due to failure to disclose an occupational or personal pension which are relevant to the amount of IB payable however many people do not realise that an occupational or personal pension is indeed relevant... you cannot fail to disclose something you do not know!

Appeal and good luck.

missapril75

benefitbaby wrote: »

many people do not realise that an occupational or personal pension is indeed relevant... you cannot fail to disclose something you do not know!

But if you are asked to declare income and you don't - whether or not you know how it might be important - and you sign to declare you have given true and complete information, saying you didn't know it was important won't really work.

rogerblack

There are a number of reasons why overpayment decisions may be incorrect.
The problem is that after this period of time has elapsed, the required data to work out if an overpayment occurred may have been destroyed.
It's not quite true that any money paid through official error is not recoverable.
This is only the case if the claimant did not know they were being overpaid.

A useful step is to request the full file of all the ib paperwork, under the data protection act.
This is free.

Anthorn

No they can't: Under the Limitation Act 1980 the DWP have 6 years to claim an overpayment. If it's over 6 years it cannot be enforced in a court of law and therefore cannot otherwise be enforced, i.e. by deduction from existing current benefits. It's known as being "statute barred". If they try to enforce it in a court of law you can put in a defence saying that it is statute barred and quoting the Limitation Act 1980.

More info on how the Limitation Act is applied to different types of debt including benefit overpayments and a helpline number from National Debtline:
http://www.bdl.org.uk/images/25_EW_NDL_Liability%20for%20debts%20and%20the%20limitations%20act.pdf

Morlock

Anthorn wrote: »

No they can't: Under the Limitation Act 1980 the DWP have 6 years to claim an overpayment. If it's over 6 years it cannot be enforced in a court of law. It's known as being "statute barred". If they try to enforce it in a court of law you can put in a defence saying that it is statute barred and quoting the Limitation Act 1980.

But the DWP can still take the debt from current or future benefit payments without a court order. So, yes, they can.

Horseunderwater

Sorry to have to tell you all this, but when we faced an overpayment situation back in the day, we were told time barring only applied in some circumstances and that they could if they wanted to recover it for upto 20 years after. We won our appeal as the other side failed to turn up to the tribunal.

missapril75

I have no knowledge of this time barred stuff in the UK. People on this forum have said that it doesn't apply to benefits. That would be no surprise as Crown Buildings were always exempt from premises style legislation.

I remember thinking how odd it was that government legislation regarding workplace premises didn't apply to government workplace buildings.

So maybe government finance practices could also be exempt from general finance legislation.

Anyway, I gather from similar North American legislation there is reference to a period of inactivity on the matter rather than from when a debt was identified.

It is very unusual that an overpayment would be identified and then absolutely nothing done about it for 14 years.

It's more likely that either something only recently came to light that meant money paid up to 14 years ago wasn't (fully) due or that the DWP has been trying to do something about it but hasn't been getting responses to letters or hasn't had a contact address or was aware of circumstances where recovery couldn't proceed but now it could.

Overpayment legislation is such that recovery steps can't be taken without the DWP referring to specific parts of legislation that allow them to calculate an overpayment, identify the reason, decide it's recoverable and how it might be repaid.

I used to work on overpayment recoveries (albeit prior to all the legislation quoting) and it was an eye opener, the number of people claiming to know nothing of an overpayment when in their file was the signed statement accepting the overpayment and agreeing to repay it by whatever agreed arrangement.

Also surprising was the number of people claiming to owe nothing because they had been fined (less than the overpaid amount) in respect of the offence.

Anyway, I'm just suggesting that if legislation does indeed identify when recovery cannot be pursued for time reasons, it may be the clock starts ticking from the last time there was any official action on the matter rather than from when the money was originally paid.

nobile

If they underpaid you 14 years ago, would they pay up?

Council Tax certainly dont!