DLA Overpayments

Rennison41

Hello All

I’ve been a real idiot and now I’m absolutely terrified. My adult son receives DLA support group and PIP. In 2022 he got a bit of a windfall from an old building society account from my late Mum. It came to almost £4000. I had the option to pay it into any account but I stupidly put it into his Pip and DLA account. I honestly had no idea about the £6000 limit!! Obviously this payment sent it right over £6000 and on quite a few months £7000.

A week ago he had his migration letter to UC. Again I’m an idiot! I’d heard of UC but didn’t know ESA was charging to it. I wasn’t too perturbed until I started reading up on UC and saw the £6000 keep being mentioned. Checked his statements and realised he’d been overpaid for almost 2 and half years! I immediately rang the DWP and told them. We’ve had a letter through to send off all the relevant statements which we’ve done.

What do you think will happen? It was honestly a genuine mistake and I told them immediately. Will they take that into consideration? I’m so scared. 

Thanks for reading. 

WelshPaul

Where Disability Living Allowance (DLA) and PIP are concerned, savings do not affect eligibility for the benefit, as DLA and PIP are not means-tested and have no savings limit. ESA (Employment and Support Allowance) has different rules based on the amount of savings you have. If you have savings between £6,000 and £16,000, your ESA payments are reduced. The worst case scenario is that you will have to repay any overpayment, and you may get hit with a penalty...

For simplicity reasons, let's say you had a total of £7000 in your account at the end of each month consistently for the last two years. If you failed to tell UC about this, you would have been over-paid £417.60. That's because your benefits are reduced each month by £4.35 for every £250 you have above £6000. That's £17.40p a month, which is where I got the £417.60 overpayment from (17.40 x 24).

Someone more knowledgeable will be along soon.

Spoonie_Turtle

WelshPaul said:

For simplicity reasons, let's say you had a total of £7000 in your account at the end of each month consistently for the last two years. If you failed to tell UC about this, you would have been over-paid £417.60. That's because your benefits are reduced each month by £4.35 for every £250 you have above £6000. That's £17.40p a month, which is where I got the £417.60 overpayment from (17.40 x 24).

Someone more knowledgeable will be along soon.

For ESA it's weekly, £1 for every £250 above £6,000 each week (which is where UC gets £4.35 monthly from converting the weekly amount), but should work out roughly similar depending on how many weeks it's been exactly.

Rennison41

I’m happy to repay the overpayment. I’m just worried they’ll think it’s a bit suspicious that we’ve only told them just when his UC letter has just come through and we have to send in statements. Maybe I’m overthinking it 🤷🏼‍♀️. 

elsien

I think you are overthinking it a little bit. You’re talking about between zero and 1000 over the savings limit. As you say, as soon as you realised you let them know. I don’t think anyone at the DWP is going to be put two and two together and coming up with five in the circumstances . 

poppy12345

Even though DLA and PIP are not means tested, just so that you’re aware, he can’t possibly be claiming both at the same time. It would either be DLA or PIP, likely to be PIP. 

elsien

I think they meant to say ESA support group, not DLA. 

Newcad

Another thing to mention is that there may not even be any overpayment here.

You say:

I had the option to pay it into any account but I stupidly put it into his Pip and DLA account. I honestly had no idea about the £6000 limit!! Obviously this payment sent it right over £6000 and on quite a few months £7000.

To me that sounds like an account where he has his benefits paid into, is that right?

If it is then his benefits each month don't count as savings. (They only become savings if unspent by next time they are paid).

So for each months statement you take the total in the account minus the benefits that have been paid in that month, and that figure is what are savings.
(There may also be other things that could be disregarded, eg the Cost of Living payments if they haven't been spent yet).

For example if there was say £5,990 savings in the account then a PIP payment would take it to over £6K, but it's still only £5,990 savings.

You could easily get to £7k in an account but still be below £6K savings.

Let the DWP look at the statements and work out what is what, but from what you have said then there may not be any overpayment.

PS, Even if there has been an overpayment it's not a great problem, they will just ask for it to be paid back at so much a month from his UC.
They won't be looking at it as being any attempt at fraud, just a genuine mistake. They see such mistakes all the time and can tell the difference.