UC paid twice in same AP, whos fault is it?

blackstar

Hello all

Just wondering who's fault is it when someone's monthly 12 times a year salary falls twice in the same AP?

Our AP is 29th - 28th and my wife gets paid her monthly salary on or around the last working day of the month. 
This means many months she is paid twice in the same AP.
UC have said in the journal

"With regard to (my wifes name) earnings this issue is with her employer and not UC  as they do not pay on a specific day/date each month and pay dates vary month to month with no regularity. "

So who's fault is it? My wife has spoken with payroll at her company and they cant change the date she gets paid as the entire company are paid the same time. 

Isn't it a fault with the UC system?

The problem is that it takes UC about 3 weeks to reallocate one of her salaries into the next AP which means we have a £0 UC award for about 3 weeks. 

born_again

In reality (no reflection on you here) the issue was with the timing of your claim, but that may not have been noticed at claim time.
Had you applied a week either way, odds on this would not have been a issue.

Although this is on Gov UC claim site
https://www.gov.uk/universal-credit/how-your-wages-affect-your-payments

Your Universal Credit amount will be affected if you:

• do not get paid during a monthly assessment period
• get paid more than once in a monthly assessment period
• earn a different amount in each monthly assessment period

You can check how much Universal Credit you’ll be paid by signing in to your online account.

Robbie64

Is there an actual date when your wife should be paid or does this differ from month to month? By this I mean, if the wages are meant to cover a calendar month (1st to last day of month) and the wages are paid on the last working day of the month, then the employer should be reporting the pay date as the date last day of the month and not the date payment goes into the bank. This is covered in guidance from HMRC. Some employers make a mistake of reporting the date the employee is due to receive his or her wages and not the true pay date.

blackstar

So her contract says she will be paid on the last working day of the month but always gets paid on the second last working day of the month.
For example, she got paid thurs Aug 28th 2025. Wed 30th July 2025.

NedS

blackstar said:

The problem is that it takes UC about 3 weeks to reallocate one of her salaries into the next AP which means we have a £0 UC award for about 3 weeks. 

Although you are correct that you can ask UC to reallocate the earnings to the AP in which it would normally fall, are you sure that will leave you better off?

In some cases having no UC in one AP and a higher amount in the next (or previous) can give you a higher overall UC amount over the two APs (which of course doesn't help if you don't have a small amount of savings to see you through).

It's no one's fault - it's just how the system is designed and is one of the quirks of having an AP end date that falls around the end of the month.

blackstar

Isn't it a system design flaw? 

I wouldn't mind but it takes 3 weeks for them to reallocate my wifes salary into the next AP and that means no UC payment for 3 weeks. Its such a long and u reasonable length of time. 

NedS

blackstar said:

Isn't it a system design flaw? 

Maybe, but what change would you make to fix it?

The issue is that your wife is not paid on the same date every month, and some months it falls at the end of the AP and in other months it falls at the start of the AP.

I appreciate it can take 3 weeks to update, as the process of overriding received earnings data is necessarily not straight forward, as otherwise it would be easily open to abuse.

This is why some people give consideration to the date on which they make their claim to ensure their AP dates do not fall near payment dates. But you would need to be aware of this before making a UC claim.

TELLIT01

If there has been an overpayment, it will have to be repaid irrespective of who was at fault.  The days of DWP not being able to claim back money paid for their errors is long gone.