Universal Credit Overpayment in relation to Carer's Allowance

ash28mg

Hi everyone,

My parents jointly claim UC and received letter stating they owe overpayment money – from Universal Credit. One of my parent receives carer’s allowance and that application was delayed as DWP kept rejecting our applications for disability/PIP, regardless of the evidence and all we provided – to the extent that one on the health assessors who my parent had to see blatantly lied in her statement. But we never gave up and after 2-3 years we could prove my fathers disability and the appeal was finally lapsed in favour of my father.

Post this he also got awarded PIP claim which was was delayed significantly, and the Carers Allowance for my mother had a big delay so they made a one off payment for those missed months in 2020.

Now DWP/Universal Credit sent out a letter online – no explanation as to how and why.... no information other than ‘ _____ was paid carer’s allowance dating back to May until October. We had not taken this into account when we paid you.’ Because of this you have been overpaid £800 or so and now need to pay this back. Contact us within a month and the usual stuff they always write.

Well, I rang the number provided on 3-4 occasions and a recorded message saying lines are closed. When actually the letter states Monday to Friday 8am to 7.30pm and Saturday 9am to 4pm. We’ve tried contacting them on various days, various times and definitely way before 7.30pm during the weekday. I finish work at 4-5pm and as soon as I get home the first thing I do is ring. I can’t ring in mornings as I start work way before 8am. Well yes all gets mentioned is that we are closed and this website is mentioned – I went on it a few times and all it shows is ‘Page Not Found’.

 I manage the technological/phone call side of things with parental consent of course - before anyone jumps on a bandwagon that I am accessing or doing things for them without their consent or whatever.

So during this time I also looked back at each monthly payments that were made by UC. I checked from May up to October, and apart from May 2020 all carer’s allowance deductions had been made by Universal Credit on a monthly basis until now. But from May to October (starting from June I should say as there was no deduction made for May or previous months), but yes bearing this in mind I calculated the amount they deduced from June to October, and they have deducted over £1000. So now I am trying to make sense what they are trying to convey. They have clearly made deductions during the time period they claim to have overpaid, so we are slightly confused and want a clarification. 

 I rang to discuss this again and also typed on the journal but get referred to the same number which I cannot get through. I am keen to send a letter which will be signed and tracked, but still I have trust issues – never know they may claim that we failed to get in touch within a month.

 My parents honestly do not mind in making the payment, if there has been a genuine overpayment. But like I've mentioned we want to clarify why this has happened and also if they do a give a clear reason, we’d just like to discuss a plan for repayment if that is the case. Also, the letter states if not contacted within a month this will be deducted from Universal Credit, but does not specify how the payment will be deducted – as in as a one-off or in instalments like deducting a percentage each month? Again, if it's monthly deductions like 10% or something monthly then they honestly do not mind.

 Finally, my father also noticed from my parents bank statement, one or 2 weeks worth of carer’s allowance has not been paid – from last month. Yet again, UC made the full Carer's Allowance deduction during that month. 

Any advice would be appreciated.

Thanks

calcotti

The problem you will have in checking the history is that DWP will have updated the UC journal  and overwritten the original statements. The current statements will therefore show the current calculation. I suggest you need to go through your parents back accounts and now compare the UC amounts shown on the statements with the UC amounts actually received by your parents. The difference will be an overpayment.

Any overpayment recovery from UC will be a monthly deduction over a period of time.

As regards missing CA payments you will need to take that up with the CA team.

ash28mg

calcotti said:

The problem you will have in checking the history is that DWP will have updated the UC journal  and overwritten the original statements. The current statements will therefore show the current calculation. I suggest you need to go through your parents back accounts and now compare the UC amounts shown on the statements with the UC amounts actually received by your parents. The difference will be an overpayment.

Any overpayment recovery from UC will be a monthly deduction over a period of time.

As regards missing CA payments you will need to take that up with the CA team.

Thanks for the response. From what I know is that they have received the exact monthly payments as mentioned in the UC payment statements. Me and my parents would always check the payments every month, comparing the bank statement and the UC statement - nothing has changed.

calcotti

Without seeing the amounts paid and the statement calculations it's difficult to add anything further. 

Spoonie_Turtle

ash28mg said:

calcotti said:

The problem you will have in checking the history is that DWP will have updated the UC journal  and overwritten the original statements. The current statements will therefore show the current calculation. I suggest you need to go through your parents back accounts and now compare the UC amounts shown on the statements with the UC amounts actually received by your parents. The difference will be an overpayment.

Any overpayment recovery from UC will be a monthly deduction over a period of time.

As regards missing CA payments you will need to take that up with the CA team.

Thanks for the response. From what I know is that they have received the exact monthly payments as mentioned in the UC payment statements. Me and my parents would always check the payments every month, comparing the bank statement and the UC statement - nothing has changed.

To be certain you should go back through to check.  If the journal has been overwritten then the only way you'll be able to prove for sure that they received the amounts with deductions already taken is with bank statements anyway, so that's your starting point really.

Alice_Holt

OP - I'm not sure I entirely follow your post.

When on UC  there will be a deduction for any CA paid to you (£ for £), but a carers UC element of c.£163 should have been added to the claim.
a) Has the UC carers element been added for the exact periods CA was paid?
b)  You say "From what I know is that they have received the exact monthly payments as mentioned in the UC payment statements".  Are these the UC statements which have been retrospectively "corrected" by UC (including a deduction for the CA actually received)?   If so, the overpayment looks suspect.
c) Given there was a lump sum back payment of CA, is this the amount of the UC overpayment?
And have UC added the carers element for the same period to the UC claim?

You need to ask UC for a detailed breakdown of the overpayment - showing UC amounts actually paid and why / how the overpayment arose.  This will need some perseverance to obtain, you may wish to involve your MP. You will need to get this from UC not DWP debt management.
You may also wish to establish how they deal with any lump sum CA back payments in a UC claim.
I would tend to do this in writing (keeping a copy of all correspondence), you could also raise a Mandatory Reconsideration if you think the UC payments are incorrect, if no reply then raise a DWP complaint, etc.

 Chart all payments out on a spreadsheet, showing periods covered, dates, UC payment page details  actual payments received UC and CA, etc.

datec66

Hi, unfortunately this is now a very common problem since they stopped 'recoveries' on UC Full service that was done on legacy benefits ie carers offered their arrears pay to the legacy benefits to recover their overpayment from the now backdated carers allowance arrears.

The legacy benefit would automatically add the carer premium within the calculation and replied back to carers allowance saying pay the claimant their carer premium (as the actual carers allowance would be recovered penny for penny from the income based legacy benefit).  Carers then only paid the amount they were told from the arrears meaning their was no longer an overpayment and everybody was happy although people always complained about not understanding it and the delay in carers allowance paying any arrears whilst waiting for the answer from the legacy benefit. 

Now carers allowance just pay all the arrears to the carer and can't ask for a recovery anymore under full service.  So that then leaves uc with an overpayment to recover for the past period that carers has now been paid that wasn't included in the original monthly awards.  The red herring here is that the carer can't claim the carers element from uc as pip wasn't awarded at the time to qualify for it. 

So what happens is pip is awarded after say a 6 month wait and the disabled person receives a large amount of pip arrears plus potential arrears from their uc claim for benefit cap, spare room subsidy deductions etc and carers allowance then backdate the carers claim 6 months also paying them arrears without offering uc a 'recovery'. 

A 'not very clever' case manager then agrees the uc systems overpayment calculation on the carers uc claim and changes all the past ap online statements to the now corrected award and sends the carer a standard ucd367 letter in the journal which doesn't fully explain whats happened properly in my opinion which is exactly as you describe whats happened.  The claimant then checks the now amended uc statements, doesn't usually bother checking the actual amounts paid on their bank statements, so they see the carers allowance deductions and think its all correct and there has been no uc overpayment even though they've just had hundreds or thousands paid into their account by carers allowance!!. 

This problem is then compounded by the fact that covid suspended uc referring any overpayments that happened months ago, they've now spent all the carers allowance backpay and now get a uc overpayment letter months later now uc are allowed to refer them again.  IMO they should bring back other benefit backpay recoveries to uc for calculation to stop an overpayment before carers pay anything to the carer. 

A decent case manager would ignore the overpayment calculation temporarily and ask the carer in the journal the reason why they reported caring late.  This would lead to the carer saying it wasn't there fault pip and therefore carers allowance was awarded late etc so it was impossible to claim the carer element on time.  The case manager sends this to a decision maker, they allow the backdating of the uc carers element so then the case manager can then reduce the original overpayment calculation by the system before sending the ucd367 with hopefully a better explanation in the journal than this standard letter offers.   

So my advice is your parent who is the carer should log into their uc home page and report a change that they are caring for someone from the date pip was backdated from or the actual start date if later to be awarded the carer element.  They should also send a journal asking the case manager to refer it to a DM for the carers element to be backdated first before doing anything else on the basis that you could not apply for it legitimately on time.  They would then receive backpay from uc's carer element for the affected ap's and could decide to pay that off the £800 overpayment balance with DWP debt management. 

UC deduct 15% of the monthly standard allowance or up to 25% if the ap had earnings on it above the work allowance.  However they can take £0 or less than 15%  if other higher priority deductions existed on the uc claim and the overall total can't exceed 30% (or 40% if fuel or rent arrears deductions are applicable).  They can also deduct a set figure if agreed with debt management beforehand. 

I believe CPAG queried this practice with DWP years ago and it seems the only solution so far is a DM will agree to backdate the carers element IF the claimant (carer) asks them to do so.  I know, shocking!!!   

Bring back recoveries and auto award carer element backdated like legacy benefits I say to stop all this nonsense, upset to carers and extra costs to recover the overpayment!!!  UC live service did recoveries so why they stopped it on full service is behond me

Spoonie_Turtle

@datec66 Can you please put in some paragraphs?  I don't think I'm the only one who has trouble reading huge walls of text

poppy12345

Spoonie_Turtle said:

@datec66 Can you please put in some paragraphs?  I don't think I'm the only one who has trouble reading huge walls of text

+1 on this. I read a few lines then stopped...

datec66

Sorry, it was late and I typed all that on my phone in my defence!!  Now amended.