UC claim review

tomtom256

HillStreetBlues said:

Thanks KxMx
 
To me it seems they are circumventing the law.  To get access to someone bank account  they have to suspect fraud (they are trying to change that law).
So now they are insisting a person shows them their bank account on the pretext of checking you are getting the correct benefit.
Basically  a  person is having to prove that they aren't committing fraud.

There not though, as they aren't gaining access to the bank account as part of the review, they asking the claimant to provide statements, which is completely different and isn't circumventing any law.
They can lawfully request any information they need to review entitlement/eligiblity on a claim.
The fraud access is direct and without a claimant knowing that it has been accessed.

Muttleythefrog

tomtom256 said:

HillStreetBlues said:

Thanks KxMx
 
To me it seems they are circumventing the law.  To get access to someone bank account  they have to suspect fraud (they are trying to change that law).
So now they are insisting a person shows them their bank account on the pretext of checking you are getting the correct benefit.
Basically  a  person is having to prove that they aren't committing fraud.

There not though, as they aren't gaining access to the bank account as part of the review, they asking the claimant to provide statements, which is completely different and isn't circumventing any law.
They can lawfully request any information they need to review entitlement/eligiblity on a claim.
The fraud access is direct and without a claimant knowing that it has been accessed.

Not exactly much different though is it hence the circumventing concept.... as transactional level information is about all they would surely see in a formal case of suspected fraud (or potentially if they change the law as they intend without suspicion). Normally all they'd be interested in is how much savings you've got... not where you buy your knickers. Transactional level information forced to be provided by millions of claimants (which in some cases will disclose sensitive information and possibly information the state/courts/police would want redacted) effectively places them at an information disclosure level of a fraud investigation albeit known to them. For comparison when I sold my house and had a 6 figure sum in savings... and then struggled to buy a new property so required an extension of the 6 month disregard before eventually purchasing property - at no time was any evidence requested on savings level or proof of transaction by Universal Credit even when I offered to upload... indeed no evidence was requested other than my word that I was even seeking a property to buy. I've a horrible feeling increasing use of AI to raise suspicions along with greater access to private information will leave a lot of people vulnerable to fear of claiming and suspicion. 

HillStreetBlues

With the proposed changes to spy on a benefit claimant's bank accounts they don't have enough staff to do this in any mass way.
They will put the onus on banks, like they have done with fraud and money laundering.  With accounts that get income related benefits payments it will be expected of the banks to create a system that will alert them over a certain limit, or any suspicious activity. Then they will notify the DWP.

Banks make mistakes, ask anyone whose bank account has been wrongly frozen and the time it has taken to get it reinstated. The DWP works even slower than banks, so the danger is once notified the DWP will freeze payments until a person can show they aren't committing fraud and that might take a while.
 

murphyslaw2020

They will be creating division between contribution-based benefits and means tested benefits too.

born_again

HillStreetBlues said:

Has anyone blanked out the descriptions of what the transactions are for when asked for bank statements?
Can see why they would want to check if over capital threshold, but what you spend your money on should be private.

They need the transactions so they are sure you are not sending funds to someone to stay under limit. 
I got asked what a payment coming in each month was. It was daughters board.
Ours all had to be in PDF format as well. OK for bank accounts, but some savings only send annual statements. So had to copy & past into word to create a PDF.
No need to pay for app/program to do it for you.

HillStreetBlues

born_again said:

HillStreetBlues said:

Has anyone blanked out the descriptions of what the transactions are for when asked for bank statements?
Can see why they would want to check if over capital threshold, but what you spend your money on should be private.

They need the transactions so they are sure you are not sending funds to someone to stay under limit. 
I got asked what a payment coming in each month was. It was daughters board.
Ours all had to be in PDF format as well. OK for bank accounts, but some savings only send annual statements. So had to copy & past into word to create a PDF.
No need to pay for app/program to do it for you.

If capital is under £6k you can do whatever you like with the money, spend it or give it away as UC had no system in what might happen.
You can't report anything with UC that will happen in the future. This includes any money you might be getting.
If you have £6k in capital and gave £5k away that's fine as you have never had over £6k, just because a future payment would have taken you over doesn't matter.

It starts to matter when over £6k, if you had £10k and gave £5k away  then you can be classed as still having the £10k as at the point you gave the money away it increased the UC amount. (you would get £69.60 more in UC)

EDIT
Having reread were you talking about hiding money rather than giving it to someone?

gbhxu

Is there anything under GDPR (Data Protection) laws that you can legally use not send them your statements?

Apparently, the law does allow for anonymizing data

Personally, I don't want the DWP to know how I spend my money. (Just let your mind wonder what a housebound disabled person spends his money on)

I would agree to the deposits and withdrawal amounts but not by whom.

The Human Rights Act Article 8 gives you the right to privacy!

HillStreetBlues

gbhxu said:

Is there anything under GDPR (Data Protection) laws that you can legally use not send them your statements?

Apparently, the law does allow for anonymizing data

Personally, I don't want the DWP to know how I spend my money. (Just let your mind wonder what a housebound disabled person spends his money on)

I would agree to the deposits and withdrawal amounts but not by whom.

The Human Rights Act Article 8 gives you the right to privacy!

As I see it, they will claim to need to see the statements in full to make sure nothing has been altered, this would be allowed under the DPA.

What they could fall fail of in DPA is asking about transactions that have nothing to do with the claim,
If you have under £6k in capital then any spending is allowed, if they question you about a payment (such as Sky)  then they are misusing that data, as they have no legitimate reason for that question

KxMx

If it helps at the time of my compliance check , I was over £6k but under £6k once the CoL payments were excluded. I had done a journal note detailing this before my phone appointment. 

As mentioned, no blanking out anything on my statement was allowed. I initially left payments in from eBay fully visible, but blanked out some business names for minor outgoing transactions. 

Had to re submit unredacted statements, even the 6 month one I wasn't allowed to black out the 2 month period they didn't want to know about.

I was questioned about various transactions including £12 pm for window cleaner and £30 odd for broadband. And about One PayPal payment over the whole 6 months, for £25, because it showed as a direct debit.
I had to explain how PP worked (if bank account is used as funding source then it is a DD).
Two regular payments out which were for credit cards "that's okay we don't ask to see those" was the reply! 
I was not questioned about the money in from eBay which was regular before tailing off. 

After those questions she asked me to send individual pages showing all my CoL payments so she could calculate my capital, which was confirmed to be under £6k.

Muttleythefrog

Interesting... so they're querying broadband monthly direct debits and window cleaning bill, indicate lacking understanding of paypal function, but aren't interested in credit card transactions. It flies in the face of data protection (even asking you to reveal information they've not asked for!) where people should have access to only data they need... shocking really.. especially when you consider the vast scale of money that has recently been handed to criminals during the pandemic. I wonder how the police and other services will feel about DWP staff querying payments they are making to people (inevitably it will happen)... and I wonder what the legal position is of disclosing information you legally are obligated to not disclose. What a mess. Better start cleaning up our statements by pretending to be dead.