Universal Debtl Credit Advice

Shy_Ted_Utd

My daughter is a single parent 3 year student nurse
Over the last 3 years she has complied with every request attended every meeting supplied every document, which they do not dispute.
Today she received a phone call from UC claiming she has been overpaid for the last 3 years and could be a substantial amount of 15-20k which she needs to payback.
They are claiming that even after providing all the relevant documents that she is not  entitled to UC a !!!!!! up on their behalf ,as she was in receipt of a student loan which they were fully aware of which they class as an income.
As you can imagine this has come as a real shock .
We are at a loss of where we stand but have spoke with CAB quickly over the phone who suggested once UC have provided the final figure outcome we respond with a letter  a mandatory reconsideration denying the owed debt and why with all documentation provided.
In the interim and going forward can anyone else provide and further information assistance of what else we can do
Thanks

kimwp

It might be worth moving this to the benefits board- lots of UC experts there.

sourcrates

Moved to correct board.

calcotti

This will not be what you want to hear.
Student loans are taken into account as income when working out UC entitlement (there are rules about what is taken into account and which months it is applied to).
For older benefits if DWP make a mistake, known as ‘official error’, they are not allowed to recover the money. Government rewrote the rules for UC and any overpayment is recoverable even if DWP have made a mistake (which doesn’t incentivise them to get it right). They have discretion no5 to recover and at the time government suggested they would not recover in such cases but, to the best of my knowledge, that discretionary power has almost never been used.

A practical thing she may wish to do is save copies of all of her UC statements to date so she has a record. If DWP do revised calculations they may overwrite the existing record. 

Once the situation is clearer, if she has a good MP she could try to see if they can provide any support.

Spoonie_Turtle

calcotti said:

This will not be what you want to hear.
Student loans are taken into account as income when working out UC entitlement (there are rules about what is taken into account and which months it is applied to).
...
A practical thing she may wish to do is save copies of all of her UC statements to date so she has a record. If DWP do revised calculations they may overwrite the existing record. 

This is really important.  If she stands any chance of perhaps arguing that 3 years is an unreasonable amount of time for them to not notice their error, she needs proof of everything that's happened with her claim including that she notified them about her student income and that they failed to take it into consideration.  DWP seem to have a habit of overwriting previous information and statements on UC journals so she needs to save everything now (print to PDF should be a simple option in Chrome).

Note:  I do not know whether there is any chance of being able to argue she shouldn't have to repay based on the timeframe, but she has nothing to lose by doing so.  Besides, if there is any other angle at all she still needs to proof of how things stand currently.

calcotti

DWP approach to discretionary powers to waive recovery are outlined in Section 8 of the DWP Debt Recovery Guide
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/benefit-overpayment-recovery-staff-guide/benefit-overpayment-recovery-guide#chapter-8--write-off-and-waiver

CPAG have a judicial review pre action template letter here 
https://cpag.org.uk/file/5442/download?token=-YdQhg4l

More on attitude of the government in these parliamentary exchanges
https://questions-statements.parliament.uk/written-questions/detail/2020-01-20/5464
https://questions-statements.parliament.uk/written-questions/detail/2020-01-20/5466
https://questions-statements.parliament.uk/written-questions/detail/2020-03-09/27034
and in these threads
https://www.rightsnet.org.uk/forums/viewthread/16366
https://www.rightsnet.org.uk/forums/viewthread/15697

When Welfare Reform was originally debated it was said

The practical reality is that we do not have to recover money from people where official error has been made, and we do not intend, in many cases, to recover money where official error has been made. There will be an absolutely clear code of practice that will govern the circumstances in which recovery action will or will not be taken, to ensure consistent, considered decision making. ...
With recovery of all overpayments, a number of factors will be considered. We will consider not only whether the claimant received the money in good faith but whether recovery of the money is likely to cause the claimant or their immediate family significant hardship or threaten their health or welfare, 

https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201011/cmpublic/welfare/110519/am/110519s01.htm
It appears that practice is somewhat different to that implied by this statement.

Alice_Holt

Thanks calcotti.
   Some interesting references there. 
   As you say DWP practice is very different - to quote Quince  "In 2019/20 (up to 31st December 2019), there were 10 Universal Credit claimants who had their debts waived."

calcotti

The ability to recover regardless of blame, apart from the moral issues, seems to me to mean that is no urgency for DWP to resolve any issues promptly because they know they can simply get any money overpaid back at a later date.

Shy_Ted_Utd

Firstly can I thank everyone for their responses and I will spend the weekend reading the links.
Fortunately all correspondence has been saved.

Once we have the final break down we will contact our MP

Clearly if they do enforce repayment this is going to bring great hardship as she won’t be able to pay her rent and so forth as she has no means of income .

If the appeal is unsuccessful she is concerned how repayments are made and would this affect her credit ratings which at the moment for someone of her age and position is pretty good

calcotti

If there is ongoing benefit entitlement recovery would be by deduction from future payments. If there is no ongoing benefit entitlement a repayment arrangement would have to be put in place. 
I don't think benefit overpayment debts appear on credit files (others may be able to confirm).

fatbelly

calcotti said:

I don't think benefit overpayment debts appear on credit files (others may be able to confirm).

That is correct