Overpayments of benefits due to official error

BriNylon

To what extent are overpayments due to official error recoverable from the claimant?
I am not talking about where the claimant has made erroneous or negligent declarations, rather where eg claimant has made a disclosure and department has not acted upon it.

KatrinaWaves

Which benefit? 

the onus is also on the claimant to check their award notices to see if mistakes have been made. 

NedS

On UC all over-payments are recoverable, regardless if they are due to official error.

calcotti

BriNylon said:

To what extent are overpayments due to official error recoverable from the claimant?
I am not talking about where the claimant has made erroneous or negligent declarations, rather where eg claimant has made a disclosure and department has not acted upon it.

For legacy benefits overpayments caused by official error are not recoverable but officiously official error needs to be demonstrated.
 As Ned says for UC all overpayment are recoverable regardless of cause (which unfortunately doesn't give DWP any incentive to resolve errors quickly).

TELLIT01

At one time, letters to claimants about overpayment due to official error were worded in such a way that people thought they had to repay it.  The letter wording was changed after a legal challenge.  That was for legacy benefits e.g. ESA, JSA.  The change of rules, enabling all over-payments to be recovered, was brought in, in my opinion, due at least in part because insufficient staffing levels meant they didn't have time to do changes in a timely manner.  I know that some changes weren't actioned for over 6 months from the date of receipt where I worked.

calcotti

TELLIT01 said:

At one time, letters to claimants about overpayment due to official error were worded in such a way that people thought they had to repay it.  The letter wording was changed after a legal challenge.  That was for legacy benefits e.g. ESA, JSA.  The change of rules, enabling all over-payments to be recovered, was brought in, in my opinion, due at least in part because insufficient staffing levels meant they didn't have time to do changes in a timely manner.  I know that some changes weren't actioned for over 6 months from the date of receipt where I worked.

That reinforces my opinion too. The change is contrary to natural justice.

speedfreek1000

NedS said:

On UC all over-payments are recoverable, regardless if they are due to official error.

Unless you can demonstrate that recovery would cause the claimant hardship.

That might lead to reduced re-payments or it being waved. But apparently very difficult to get them to agree too. 

I'd also keep all paper work as it's highly probable that it will periodically re-appear in random DWP debt trawls and they try and recover it again.

calcotti

speedfreek1000 said: That might lead to reduced re-payments or it being waved. But apparently very difficult to get them to agree too. 

Correct but unfortunately the last bit of your sentence is the most telling!

BriNylon

Sorry to resurrect this old thread but I am a bit confused by one of your posts Calcutti.
You said overpayments on legacy benefits are not recoverable if they are due to official error.  
Then tellit01 said that rules had been changed, which you confirmed your agreement that all overpayments are recoverable.
Does that mean that only legacy benefits official error overpayments are not recoverable, but all other overpayments are recoverable?

calcotti

BriNylon said:

Does that mean that only legacy benefits official error overpayments are not recoverable, but all other overpayments are recoverable?

Overpayments due to official error on legacy DWP benefits are not recoverable.
All overpayments on UC and new style JSA/ESA are recoverable regardless of cause. 

(TELLIT01 didn't say that legacy benefit rules had changed, he said that the wording of letters issued had changed.)

BriNylon

Thanks for this.  Sorry for the misunderstanding.
What about retirement pensions, DLA, PIPs and AA?