Fraudulent Carers claim now being told owe £10,000

pksters42

Hi,
Back in 2017 I allowed my dad to claim carers allowance but asked for it to be stopped and never signed to letter to confirm he could continue claiming it, and then got my own place and submitted a housing benefit claim and had no problem (this is how I know it was stopped and I'll explain further in my post)
So I became homeless in October last year and after 4 months of being on the streets I got somewhere to live, but upon submitting the housing benefit claim after 1 month I got a decision from my council telling me to claim universal credit with no explanation, after ringing up my local council 3 times I got told my dad was claiming carers allowance, so I decided to write a letter to carers allowance telling them to stop the carers claim as it was fraudulent, and after getting the carers allowance claim stopped, my SDP was reinstated but today I decided to contact ESA to ask them about giving me money back that was not paid back to me when my SDP was reinstated all to be told I owe them £10,000 and my SDP has been removed again.
I know for a fact that my dad could not be claiming carers since 2017 up until now as I asked them to cancel it and if a carers allowance claim was still active then they would of refused my housing benefit claim, the advisor told me on the phone that I am at fault as I should of contacted them on every payment I got to ask them to check if a carers allowance claim is still active or not 
This has made my local council not pay my rent for the past 3 months and they refuse to give me any of it back.

pksters42

My actions to try appeal this ASAP are as follows
Contacted citizens advice waiting for a call back
submitting a complaint to the DWP about this in writing by sometime tomorrow

tomtom256

Is the OP for ESA or CA?

As the CA claim was not yours, you cannot ask them to stop it.

pksters42

tomtom256 said:

Is the OP for ESA or CA?

As the CA claim was not yours, you cannot ask them to stop it.

I don't understand sorry, but my dad was claiming carers and I did get it stopped and everything reinstated then to be told that after covid-19 pandemic that I'll be having to pay them back for my severe disability premium from 2017 - 2020 of a total of around £10,000 as I never told them to cancel the carers allowance when I did back in 2017 my dad must of forged the signature, I tried my best  to explain it in my first post.

poppy12345

I don't understand because as the carers allowance wasn't your claim then you wouldn't have been able to stop the claim. Your dad would have needed to cancel it.

Spoonie_Turtle

Was your dad actually caring for you?

poppy12345

Also back in 2017 it was still possible to claim housing benefit in some areas.

pksters42

Spoonie_Turtle said:

Was your dad actually caring for you?

He was for a short period but was only Interested in the money, would resort to bullying me everyday, so I told them to cancel it and he came being nice asking me to sign the form and I refused and ended up leaving and living on the streets.

pksters42

poppy12345 said:

I don't understand because as the carers allowance wasn't your claim then you wouldn't have been able to stop the claim. Your dad would have needed to cancel it.

If you keep ringing up and find an advisor that listens to you, they can pull up a claim using your national insurance number, then they will send out a form to the person claiming asking if they are caring for you or not requiring a signature from you, and if no signature is done then the claim is stopped, now I'm being told by ESA that is it entirely my faulty as I never told them cancel the claim, and they have also removed my SDP after only just getting it reinstated a few days ago, so that leaves me without the protection SDP gives you probably forcing me onto universal credit.
And If I'm honest I have already answered most of this to the best of my ability, so please only try and give me advice that would be helpful.. as I'm not going to keep repeating the same things going in circles.

tomtom256

pksters42 said:

That is your opinion, you are stating things I already know about and I'm just not going to go round in circles like the last time I made a post here, must I list every single possibility relating to how these benefits work just to please everyone so they don't make me answer the same questions over and over again, I said please and I was as nice as possible there was zero attitude.
I am done entertaining you.

Without all the facts, it's hard to offer the correct advice.

Robbie64

Just to clarify something, when did you first receive the Severe disability premium (SDP)? Was it back in 2017? If not, can you remember roughly when it was? A £10k overpayment would suggest 3 years ago (2017). What benefit(s) were you receiving back then? Employment and Support Allownce (ESA) or Housing Benefit(HB) or both?

How long did your dad receive Carers Allowance (CA) for before you asked CA unit to cancel his claim? I assume you asked for it to be stopped because you must have said he wasn't caring for at least 35 hours per week for you. CA Unit should have written out to your dad - your post suggests this is the case - and I'm assuming you didn't sign the declaration to say he was caring for you for 35 hours a week. Did your SDP then get put into payment? Again, if so, can you remember when? And if so, do you have any benefit reassessment letters from back then? (if you don't, no problem, the DWP should have them on their computer records and you can request a copy).

Moving forward to last year, when you became homeless were you still receiving the SDP at the point you became homeless?

What should have happened after this will depend on whether you were receiving the SDP in your ESA / HB at this point OR no one was receiving CA for you. You state you weren't aware that your dad may have been getting CA for you when it seems he may still have been.

It may not be easy, but you need to sit down for a while and compose a "timeline" of what happened when (preferably with benefit award letters) as the CAB will ask you to go through this to provide further help. Your initial post is confusing to the extent it doesn't fully explain what benefits you were on and when.