UC Claim Review

Altior

It's quite a stretch. What you are saying originally is that your joint claim had a bank account with funds in it that wasn't being declared. It's irrelevant that in your mind/planning it was put aside for future bills, it was undeclared capital and broke your commitment.

With PayPal, it's a platform that can be used to easily store cash. I don't plan to declare a PayPal account unless they ask me if I have one, as it doesn't hold any money, I simply use it to facilitate card purchases. Nothing to hide obviously, just a bit less hassle!

I am planning an UC application quite soon, and have/had a vast amount of accounts with capital, 30+. My own rule of thumb will be to declare anything that I can turn back into cash aside from personal possessions. I won't be declaring anything that doesn't have anything in it, unless I am explicitly asked about it.

There is a reasonable chance that they will ask for all of your statements from the start of your claim (if you have breached the £6K at any point).

Robbie64

Getting bank-like statements for Paypal is hit and miss and a lot depends on when the account was opened. The DWP ask for statements that show opening and closing balances, including PayPal. I believe this is possible to do for people who have a more recent basic PayPal account or have a business one. However, for basic PayPal accounts opened before (I believe) 2015, all the statements show are transactions and not necessarily in a way that makes it easy to check those transactions.

I've seen posts around the internet where people with PayPal accouints have had problems with the DWP insisting on a statement in a bank-statement like style that the person simply can't obtain. The DWP will send them a link to a YouTube video that shows how to print a PayPal statement in a way that is bank-like but for older accounts it simply isn't possible to do. My PayPal account was opened in 2004 and is one of the old ones: no matter what i do I can't obtain a PayPal statement for the main PayPal account that has an opening and closing balance with a running balance after each transaction. I worry about running into problems if / when my UC claim is reviewed.

Altior

I've just checked my PayPal, out of curiosity. Profile - Joined in 2006. I was actually just contemplating whether to delete the account or not. I don't really need it anymore, online payments have moved on a lot. Of course you don't want to risk the accusation of hiding something, and when I went to delete it, it stated that the history would be lost. I suspect it might be simpler just to bin it.

born_again

. Just was not aware of such a thing, don't recall this when signing up 2+ years ago to UC anything being stated about PayPal or the likes.

I was not till account came up for review & was advised of such as well a premium bonds etc.

At least it is very easy to print of a statement for the required period.

https://www.paypal.com/uk/cshelp/article/how-do-i-view-and-download-statements-and-reports-help145

Dave1UK

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/81931793#Comment_81931793

Which part is a stretch? Yes on our joint claim, there is a bank account that I believe we didn't declare or maybe we did at the start of our claim (don't remember specifics was a long time ago - 2 years ago), we have just had our first review last month. We however didn't include the statements this time around (if I did last time) as just forgot to be fair, legally it is our account but it definitely isn't being used as our account, it holds other people money for rent and bills. As already explained the accounts only purpose of existing is as a joint account (among 3 separate parties although just opened under my wife's name) where funds are sent by myself and my wife, and our family that live with us for monthly rent and bills. Money isn't being stored there indefinitely, start of month has positive balance as everyone gets paid from work, by the end of the month rent has been paid and all bills.

Anyhow without going into specifics we did look into opening a joint account with everyone linked to it, however as we are all literally family related in a way or another, also one family party were just dating (i.e. the couple) didn't want to then have to deal with potential breakup of them which did occur and one member left and then having to remove them from a joint account etc. Therefore in order to keep things simple for everyone as well as landlord recieving one lump sum rental payment this was the way to go. Regardless as previously stated more than happy to provide UC and will with the accounts statements since inception.

In response to PayPal I don't have any positive balance on there either and definitely don't remember being asked ever by UC nor do any other friends/family members that I know have been/are on UC until a poster mentioned it here and then had a look on Google with several other cases.

Yeah that's a fair rule of thumb it seems.

Would of been easier if they just directly told me, well hope they will at the phone app, listen you didn't declare the bank statements for account X, why, please send us the statements. More than happy to oblige with any request, just doesn't help being left in the dark. Or if it's my PayPal account which has nothing or whatever.

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/81931825#Comment_81931825

Joined PayPal in 2013. It was just one of the things you would open especially when paying for items from abroad like Alibaba or whatnot whereby you wanted protection and not having to enter your personal debit/credit card information directly.

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/81931879#Comment_81931879

Well if you haven't actively used it for several months and don't plan to, don't see why deleting would be seen as hiding. Some would call it cleaning up your digital footprint! I don't plan on ever deleting mine as use it actively for payments, most payments have an option to pay via PayPal so it's a quick checkout option for me as opposed to saving or typing out debit/credit card info.

Anyway if you do plan to delete it maybe somehow save/request your statements or whatnot if you'd ever need them at some stage - if you won't get access after doing so.

Altior

But the 'noise' around why cash might be in the account, and what it might be set aside for is completely irrelevant to the DWP. If it's in a bank account in your wife's name, it is her capital (effectively yours in a joint claim) unless she can clearly demonstrate that it isn't. You can just imagine the tall tales that claimants might come up, and in some instances, the faux ignorance, as to why they had capital in accounts that were in their name but didn't declare it. DWP will just look at the facts, as much as they can be determined.

I personally think it's a stretch to go from this, to thinking they might expect you to declare a bit of credit that can be applied to future purchases in a retail account. It's not unreasonable for the DWP to ask for these statements, and yes, oversights do happen. The worst that you can expect for an oversight is to pay back any overpayment if there is one (deducted from future UC payments) and a £50 civil fine.

In regard to PayPal specifically, it's a blatantly obvious place to try and hide money, if one wanted to. As has been outlined above, PayPal can be used as a payments processor and/or a store of funds for holding/moving. The only way that the DWP can see what it is being used for is to have a sight of all of the transactions.

Being honest, the thought process in my own scenario is nearly all laziness. If I do have a review I want to have the least amount of legwork as possible. As I mentioned above, if DWP feel they have cause to, they can ask for statements going back multiple years, even before the date of the claim. So for me it's that balance of tidying things as much as possible, without giving them a cause to request legacy account activity. I think I should be okay with PayPal as there's no way they can find out that I had one in the first instance.

Dave1UK

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/81931899#Comment_81931899

I checked GOV.UK for UC money, savings and investment now and they do state -

• current accounts and digital-only accounts such as PayPal

However I most definitely don't recall seeing this statement when signing up back then, but it is what it is.

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/81931960#Comment_81931960

Agreed anyone can put a story together and spin on things if they want to. Thankfully for us it's pretty blatantly obvious what it is for, repeat amounts of incoming money from the same 3 accounts and basically same amount, then outgoing money to the same business i.e. EDF (gas/electric), CommunityFibre (internet), Council Tax, Affinity Water and Netflix subscription. They have our tenancy agreement same names.

Yeah I guess my train of thought is a stretch in terms of credit on other platforms but you never know down the line.

PayPal can be blatantly obvious however I don't think it is as obvious anymore especially due to the not so recent data reporting rules for platforms such as eBay/Vinted/PayPal etc over certain limits, notifying HMRC which in turn would most likely come back to UC anyway.

Altior

The initial review is outsourced isn't it (ie not actually DWP employees), they probably conduct many reviews a day. I don't expect they go into the detail in that sense. I don't know, but I imagine the front line base staff are simply tasked with adding up the capital balances at the end of each AP, and identifying any transfers out to bank accounts or undeclared income. You'd hope actually that software would do the hard yards and just flag up things to verify! If anything looks like fraud, then it gets immediately raised to higher level staff/DM I'm guessing. But the front line staff are unlikely to have the discretion that you allude to, beyond requesting more accounts/statements.

Dave1UK

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/81931997#Comment_81931997

Yes I believe it's outsourced, I called UC/DWP as soon as I got the message to ask for clarification/further info. They advised they have no access to those details.

Most likely software/AI? Doing the data crunching etc. Most likely similar to HMRCs software.

NedS

UCR reviews are not outsourced, they are conducted by the UCR team(s) who are specialised DWP teams that solely conduct these UC reviews. DWP has recruited 1,000's of such team members over the last few years.

However, the telephony service that you phoned is outsourced and they have limited access to UC systems hence why they are able to do little other than pass on a message that you've called for a UC agent to call you back. Generally I would not waste your time calling the telephony service and would instead use your journal to communicate where possible.

AI is used in flagging claims for review. For example, AI shows a claimant has a Paypal account and failed to declare it. But the actual review and any corrective action is undertaken by a UC agent.