Overpayment letter sent for £20,000 - Pension age error / PLEASE HELP!

nachfee

Hi Everyone,

Im quite concerned about a letter sent to my mum today, only really sent to her through her journal. No physical letter has been recieved.

The short story is: Mum and dad claimed UC at the end of 2020. Dad was of Pension Age but mum wasn't so they needed to claim UC until mum was of Pension age and then they would be moved to PC (or so we thought). Now, we didn't know mum and dad needed to do the change themselves. We thought it was all automatically through them but apperantly, they are two different and unrelated departments and the systems seem to have no communication with each other. Website also says that UC stops once you reach Pension age. So now UC is charging my mum over £20k on "overpayments".

This all got flagged now by the DWP. I called them to let them know my dad passed away a week ago (claim any changes) and only then they realised the age situation with mum and the "overcharges". I called again today to ask what happened to mum's UC payment? and then they say said "sorry, it's closed because your mum is over the pension age and by the way she owe us £20k".

Mum is on disability allowance as well.

Mum would have definitey been qualified to recieve PC anyways from her birthday. Is there anyway that we can avoid this? By proving she would have regardless recieve it.
We realised all of this happened as she couldn't access her account to pay the rent today. Her account got closed and the letter issued automatically. My mum is bereaved, dad passed away 1 month ago and had 4 traumatic months while he was in a coma and now has to deal with this.
We didn't get any letters, any emails, any phone calls to let us knwo about any changes of with the UC, any warnings that the UC will be stopped due to age, any emails that she will have her account closed, nothing.
Due to dad's death, Im trying to sort out accounts, bills, phones and EE by mistake disconnected her phone number and recieved no alerts from DWP. From the moment it got flagged about the death to the day her claim was closed 6 days passed.

Surely over 60 year old people forgetting or not knowing they need to change to PC themselves can't be an unheard situation so I wanted to aks if anyone had to deal with this? Mum has an autoinmune condition, about to have surgery, went through 4 months of her husband being in a Stroke Unit for 4 months due to a ruptured brain aneurysm and now has to deal with this! I cannot believe it to be honest!

Thank you in advance for any help. Really appreciate it. I will be calling CAB on Monday but I want to hear from anyone during the weekend so I can maybe sleep with a bit of peace of mind.

elsien

How old is your mum and when did she reach pension age? 

Is there any sort of breakdown on her journal to show how they’ve reached the 20K figure? 

calcotti

elsien said:

How old is your mum and when did she reach pension age? 

Is there any sort of breakdown on her journal to show how they’ve reached the 20K figure? 

All UC paid since she reached pension age will be an overpayment.

OP, I think you need to get expert advice. When you go to CAb go with all the paperwork for both mum and dad with full financial details including all details of what benefits they been getting. They may be able to calculate what the benefit entitlement should have been if correctly claimed and then I would ask them to help them draft a letter to argue that DWP should offset the UC overpayment against the correct entitlement.

To be clear - has mum been getting her State Pension?

Rubyroobs

Have new claims for pension credit, housing benefit and council tax been made now ? These should all be able to be backdated to offset some of the overpayment. Agree she needs specialist advice asap.

cheekyweegit

Agree about claiming Pension Credit and ask for maximum backdating which is 3 months from date of claim.  Not 100% sure of the situation of asking your mum to also claim for your dad up to the date of his death then changing it to a single claim. 

Also check if you had the carers element of UC on your dads claim and that it was not missed.

So sorry for your loss.

nachfee

calcotti said:

elsien said:

How old is your mum and when did she reach pension age? 

Is there any sort of breakdown on her journal to show how they’ve reached the 20K figure? 

All UC paid since she reached pension age will be an overpayment.

OP, I think you need to get expert advice. When you go to CAb go with all the paperwork for both mum and dad with full financial details including all details of what benefits they been getting. They may be able to calculate what the benefit entitlement should have been if correctly claimed and then I would ask them to help them draft a letter to argue that DWP should offset the UC overpayment against the correct entitlement.

To be clear - has mum been getting her State Pension?

Yes, that would be the best case scenario and what is hoping. 

I will call on Monday and hope to push for that, it makes sense. We called PC today because UC just said basically she is over 65, anything should be with PC from now on. So I started the claim for PC and are awaiting for the callback. 

She has not been getting her State Pension. We found out today, through her bank statements that she didn’t get her UC.  We called and they said it was closed due to age.
They realised this after my dads passing as I had to call them to inform them because the council has failed to give me the reference number for the Tell Us Once service. 

Due to cancelling the telephone contract, instead of moving move to a separate one they just closed her number automatically so she never got any text messages from DWP.

So after UC saying it was closed, I quickly started the claim for PC so she doesn’t go months without money. No one can help for this month. UC says they can’t help PC say we need to wait for callback.
The way they have design this system
in my humble opinion is a recipe for disaster. Many people that age are not that literate with computers and bureaucracy.
They should at least send an email or message in the journal that the age is changing soon and UC will be stopped. 

It has been a complete unfortunate and messy situation. 

nachfee

Rubyroobs said:

Have new claims for pension credit, housing benefit and council tax been made now ? These should all be able to be backdated to offset some of the overpayment. Agree she needs specialist advice asap.

Yes. Unfortunately is only 3 months and the claim they argue has been overpaid since October 2021. Mum turned 66 in September 2021. 

Pension credit, HB and so on has been requested from today but hasn’t been approved yet. I just started it so she doesn’t go so much time without money. 

calcotti

nachfee said:..because UC just said basically she is over 65, anything should be with PC from now on. 

Pension age is currently 66 which you say she reached in September 2021.

nachfee said:. 

She has not been getting her State Pension. 

She needs to claim her State Pension.

Whether or not she is entitled to any Pension Credit will depend on how much State Pension she is entitled to.

She would have received letters before reaching pension age telling her that she needed to claim it. It is possibly because she was not receiving SP that UC failed to note that she had reached pension age (although the software obviously ought to be better than that). Obviously UC had her birth date so did have the information to know that she had reached pension age. The continued payment of UC was official error but the regulations permit the recovery of overpayments of UC resulting from official error.

Re offsetting see
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/benefit-overpayment-recovery-staff-guide/benefit-overpayment-recovery-guide#chapter-5
paragraphs 3.15 onwards.
Unfortunately 3.25 excludes notional offsetting to take into account of benefit income that would have been payable had a claim been made. That may be a problem in your case as your mum hasn’t made the appropriate claims at the right time. I would still run an offsetting argument (and if necessary involve your MP).

nachfee

calcotti said:

nachfee said:..because UC just said basically she is over 65, anything should be with PC from now on. 

Pension age is currently 66 which you say she reached in September 2021.

nachfee said:. 

She has not been getting her State Pension. 

She needs to claim her State Pension.

Whether or not she is entitled to any Pension Credit will depend on how much State Pension she is entitled to.

She would have received letters before reaching pension age telling her that she needed to claim it. It is possibly because she was not receiving SP that UC failed to note that she had reached pension age (although the software obviously ought to be better than that). Obviously UC had her birth date so did have the information to know that she had reached pension age. The continued payment of UC was official error but the regulations permit the recovery of overpayments of UC resulting from official error.

Re offsetting see
[link selected due to not being here long enough to post links]

paragraphs 3.15 onwards.
Unfortunately 3.25 excludes notional offsetting to take into account of benefit income that would have been payable had a claim been made. That may be a problem in your case as your mum hasn’t made the appropriate claims at the right time. I would still run an offsetting argument (and if necessary involve your MP).

Sorry I got confused with Pension Credit. 

Parents aren’t a entitled to any State Pension, they haven’t paid 10 years of NIN contributions because they came to toe country late. 

I need to check that guide you sent thoroughly. 

diystarter7

Hi OP
If you have time, do let us know.
Thanks to @calcotti for the very helpful post.

Good luck.

calcotti

However I am concerned by the paragraph in the manual that I highlighted which appears to exclude notional offsetting against entitlement for benefits not claimed. However the opening policy statement is “The Secretary of State has an obligation to protect public funds and to ensure that, wherever possible, overpayment and penalty debt is recovered.”

Morally, offsetting should be permitted because there has been no loss to the ‘public purse’ and had UC done their job your parents would have been informed that UC was ending which would have prompted them to claim PC and HB. Their entitlement under PC and HB would almost certainly have been higher than the UC they have been receiving. 

Section about waiver (paragraph 8.4 onwards and 8.6 in particular) may be relevant. Any consideration of a waiver has to be done by DWP Debt Management. I think it likely that even if they considered a waiver they might exclude notional benefit to HB simply because HB is not a DWP benefit. They might then only offset PC against UC which would reduce the overpayment but would probably still leave some overpayment.

Despite the paragraph I referred to saying that notional offsetting is not considered paragraphs 8.36 and 8.37 expressly indicate that notional offsetting could be a consideration when considering a waiver.

There are two different processes here
i) a process to determine the debt due, and
ii) whether recovery can be waived

You can see that this is complex and the argument has to be laid out carefully and should be set out against the recovery guide.

Note however that there have only be a handful of occasions when the power to waive has been exercised in respect of UC overpayments since the introduction of UC (although this contradicts assurances given prior to the introduction of UC regarding treatment of overpayments resulting from official error).

Note that even if she is required to repay this will be by deduction from future payments and the amount of deduction is generally limited to one third of the standard allowance - but a reduced rate of deduction may be accepted if hardship can be demonstrated.

As there has not been any repayment of HB I wouldn’t expect there to be any deduction from the HB.