Clarifying a letter from DWP

Margaret_Skinner

I have literally been hanging on the phone for a whole 71 minutes waiting to speak to the DWP and I can’t listen to that voice or tinny music any longer so thought I’d try asking my query on here instead to see if I can make more progress!

I was awarded ESA of £73.10 after going to a Tribunal in February this year, backdated to September 2018 when my previous ESA was stopped.

In September this year I got a letter saying my ESA was being cut by 60 quid because of a change in income - except there hadn’t been any change. And then I received another letter saying I’d been overpaid by £3,000.01 (not even getting away with a penny!) between September 2018 and September 2019 and they want it back forthwith! The reason given was that I hadn’t told them about a work pension of £60 a week which started in September 2018.

Except I had.

I opened a Mandatory Reconsideration and sent a copy of the ‘change of circumstances’ form which I’d sent them in September 2018 and heard nothing further.

Then yesterday I got a letter from them but I’m not entirely sure what it’s saying - or rather what it’s implying. Can anyone help me to clarify?

”Dear Ms. Skinner

We have looked at your claim again following a recent change.

From September 2018 your Employment and Support Allowance will be £73.10 a week. This is because of a decision on your capability for work. You have been placed in the Work Related Activity Group.

From 3 September 2019 your Employment and Support Allowance will be £15.34 a week.

This is because of a change in money coming in.”

The rest of the letter is talking about doing work-related activity and work-focused interviews and what I have to do to continue to receive the ESA.

What I can’t figure out is if this is a letter I would have got anyway because it’s now time to start going to the JobCentre as part of receiving the ESA or if this is them saying ‘yeah ok fair enough - our mistake - you don’t have to pay the money back but we’re processing the pension from now on’.

Surely if it was the latter it would have been clearer than the way they’ve set it out??

fryedslyce

My advice is to forget about the DWP phone number and instead send your questions to correspondence@dwp.gov.uk, put "complaint" in the email subject line.
This will then be forwarded on to the correct department and they will get back to you.

That way at least you have a record.

calcotti

The fact that it says your ESA will be £73.10 from September 2018 means it looks as if they have accepted that it is official error that they did not action on the information you provided at that time and are therefore not applying the change all the way back to then.

Has your pension amount changed since you last advised them of it? You need to be sure that they have the correct amount. They appear to be making a deduction of £57.76/week (I don't think there's is any disregard for pension income - hopefully someone will correct me if that's wrong).

sportsarb

For income related there is no disregard for an occupational pension.

Even if it is official error that they didn't take the pension in to account on the claim until recently, they should still action the change from the correct date, but just write off the resulting OP. Not to do it that way runs the risk of errors being made in the future again because it may look like no action has been taken to record the pension for the correct period. Unless the claim is noted properly, and they are often not noted correctly, or the notes are deleted over the course of time.

Going forward it does appear that they have got your award correct, assuming that the pension is £57.76 and not exactly £60.

calcotti

The other possibility that occurs to me is that OP was previously in Support Group and DWP have realised that he was still eligible for 12 months of contribution based ESA from Sept 2018 to Sept 2019.

Sportsarb, you are of course right that they should record the decisions correctly. I didn’t think that through!

TELLIT01

Going forward make sure you advise DWP if/when the pension received increases.

Alice_Holt

Shows the importance of notifying any changes in writing and keeping a copy.

Doing that has saved the OP £3k.

My reading of the letter would be the same as calcotti's. The DWP have now realised that you did notify them of this change, so the £3k is unrecoverable as it is their error.

OP I assume you were on Income-based ESA for this period not Contribution-based ?

Note - Had it been UC the overpayment would have been recovered. As under UC all overpayments are recoverable - even those arising from official error.

Margaret_Skinner

fryedslyce wrote: »

My advice is to forget about the DWP phone number and instead send your questions to correspondence@dwp.gov.uk, put "complaint" in the email subject line.
This will then be forwarded on to the correct department and they will get back to you.

That way at least you have a record.

Thanks so much for this - I had no idea I could e-mail them!

Margaret_Skinner

calcotti wrote: »

The fact that it says your ESA will be £73.10 from September 2018 means it looks as if they have accepted that it is official error that they did not action on the information you provided at that time and are therefore not applying the change all the way back to then.

Has your pension amount changed since you last advised them of it? You need to be sure that they have the correct amount. They appear to be making a deduction of £57.76/week (I don't think there's is any disregard for pension income - hopefully someone will correct me if that's wrong).

I really hope you’re right and thanks for the heads up - the current amount is £6 a month more than that original amount so I’ll need to tell them that.

Margaret_Skinner

sportsarb wrote: »

For income related there is no disregard for an occupational pension.

Even if it is official error that they didn't take the pension in to account on the claim until recently, they should still action the change from the correct date, but just write off the resulting OP. Not to do it that way runs the risk of errors being made in the future again because it may look like no action has been taken to record the pension for the correct period. Unless the claim is noted properly, and they are often not noted correctly, or the notes are deleted over the course of time.

Going forward it does appear that they have got your award correct, assuming that the pension is £57.76 and not exactly £60.

Yes it is correct - my apologies - I just rounded it up to £60 for the post. However it has gone up by £6 a month now so I need to inform them of that pronto!

Margaret_Skinner

Alice_Holt wrote: »

Shows the importance of notifying any changes in writing and keeping a copy.

Doing that has saved the OP £3k.

My reading of the letter would be the same as calcotti's. The DWP have now realised that you did notify them of this change, so the £3k is unrecoverable as it is their error.

OP I assume you were on Income-based ESA for this period not Contribution-based ?

Note - Had it been UC the overpayment would have been recovered. As under UC all overpayments are recoverable - even those arising from official error.

Yes it is income-based, not contribution-based - but I’ll need to inform them that it’s gone up by £6 a month - I didn’t think of that!