UC overpayment - still haven't received letter 9 months later

n0166895

Hi all

Last year we updated our UC journal with a change of circumstances regarding savings. We had over £6000, and didn't realise about the limit/s in regards to savings and claiming UC until a friend mentioned it to us. 

To cut a long story short. We had to upload bank statements for all bank accounts from the start of our claim. A decision maker then rang my wife after we chased up a month after uploading all statements and answering some questions over the phone about some transactions. The decision making team, who dealt with it all were fine with all the answers we gave. She told my wife we owed 3.5k and that the next stage would be receiving a letter off debt management for repayment. 

However, we did not receive the letter. We closed our UC not long after all of this as we were overpaid again due to my wife's employer not informing of salary for a month. We paid that back straight away and then closed account as we didn't want any more overpayments!

I have chased up the overpayment with UC and debt management multiple times. We are now 9 months on from the decision maker telling us what we owe. Stranger yet when I ring up both UC and debt management, they say we don't owe anything!!!! It's madness.

I have put in 2 complaints online within the last month and still have heard nothing back. 

Not sure quite what to do. We have the money ready to pay back and we are in the process of moving house - moving city and myself changing job. I feel like this is just hanging over me and my family and just want it sorted. 

Any advice would be appreciated

Spoonie_Turtle

Were you only over £6,000 due to earnings each month and potentially any other disregarded amounts (like Cost of Living Payments)?

HillStreetBlues

Was you ever over £16,000?  How long had you been over the limit?

n0166895

Me and my wife both work. We claimed UC because my son has a disability in which we get DLA for. The UC paid towards his nursery costs. 

At times we were over 16k but only briefly. We were over 6k quite a bit, but due to us both working after my son was of school age our UC payments were next to nothing or nothing quite often.

huckster

The action to create the overpayment was probably never completed. The Decision Maker would have had to contact Case Manager in UC Service Centre to ask them to complete actions required. And I suspect the overpayment was not referred to Debt Management. They should close down the claim from the date when you had over £16k at the end of the assessment period. And you would then owe back any amounts from that point.

Because you have complained they may now work out the overpayment and manually refer it to Debt Management. It is just waiting for someone to complete this action.

peteuk

In the first instance, any overpayment is taken from your current claim.  If ( and it sounds like this is the case) your no longer claiming any benefits yourselves then its past to debt collection, usually internally.

I know TC had a back log and people were being contacted years later about historical overpayments.  Certainly we were chased 10 yrs after a TC overpayment.  

Not sure if it’s the same team dealing with UC overpayments id imagine it is.

HillStreetBlues

When you say you were over £16k are you talking about monies held or actual capital? as these will be different.
TBH I wouldn't trust a DM to reach the correct overpayment amount without checking they have deducted income for that AP, and any ignored capital such as Cost of Living payments  and also calculated the diminishing capital rule.

n0166895

HillStreetBlues said:

When you say you were over £16k are you talking about monies held or actual capital? as these will be different.
TBH I wouldn't trust a DM to reach the correct overpayment amount without checking they have deducted income for that AP, and any ignored capital such as Cost of Living payments  and also calculated the diminishing capital rule.

A bit of both id imagine. They did say something about disregarding cost of living payments etc. I think the DM was ok with it all. It's just since then there's no trace of it - even after I've put in complaints back in December