Four year old Universal Credit debt letter received

Myci85

Hello, I'm after some advice on what is becoming a somewhat complicated situation. A few days ago myself and partner received a DWP letter saying we owe £1690 and we need to pay it back, or start to, by 4th September. No other information given. Called DWP yesterday to try and find out more, they said it is related to Universal Credit overpayment during the period 2021-2024, they have no further details, direct me to Universal Credit.

I spoke to a very helpful lady in Universal Credit, who was able to tell me it relates to a 12 month period 2021-2022. I can't access anything from my old UC account (statements, journal entries etc) as account closed, so she went through and detailed the months we had received payments that have since been recalculated due to late income reporting. She could see on my journal entries that I had been reporting my actual income to them during this time (issue was my employer's payroll not sorting payslips in time) and chasing them to let me know what overpayment I needed to pay back. Checking through my old bank statements, I can see I made two lump sum payments to DWP debt during this period, which UC have no record of - something she told me often happens as they're not updated by DWP!

As the figures still made no sense even with the lump sums I paid off, I checked through all my salary payments on my bank statements, along with my hmrc online tax account for that year. I have discovered that the HMRC tax account is a complete mess - for some months it is showing extra payments I did not receive, and other months it is duplicated. The total figure shown at the bottom matches that on my P45, but when I totaled up the amounts actually listed month by month, it looks like I earned nearly £5000 more that year.

Due to the issues with the payroll at the time, I am missing relevant payslips, so I have contacted my old employer to see if he has these still. If not, I think I will have to try the payroll company, but I'm worried that over 4 years later, they may not have them. I obviously then need to somehow get my record on HMRC corrected.

Does anyone have any advice on what my next step should be? I'm waiting a call from UC manager, but not holding my breath, especially as they've since tried to communicate with me via the journal which I've told them I have no access to. I've requested copies of all the UC statements and journal entries to try and see if the income amounts used to calculate match the actual income I received. But despite it taking them 4 years to decide there is a debt, they're giving us less then a month to start repaying. And I'm not even convinced we owe anything yet. Would the incorrect figures on HMRC, essentially showing income I was never paid, have skewed their calculations?

Sorry for the lengthy post, trying to include all relevant info!

peteuk

UC is based on your monthly wage, where as Tax Credits was based on your yearly income. The level at which you can't claim UC depends on your personal circumstance.

Your P60 will be available online on your HMRC this will assist you with the amount you earnt and income tax paid. Your online HMRC account will also break down your employees in each year. Youll be able to get your take home pay from your bank accounts.

You may not be able to challenge this as, it would appear that you were aware of the overpayment previously, given that you have noted two lump sums paying off the overpayment.

Usually the reason for overpayment is capital over £6K and £16K, which you can work out by looking at your accounts and properties owned.

itsthelittlethings

The issue will be what HMRC have reported I imagine, but how easy that is to sort I don't know.

huckster

You can submit a right of access request to DWP asking for UC and debt management records held.

If an overpayment has been calculated related to earnings, it appears your employers at the time have submitted your earnings information to HMRC continually on a late basis. And based on what you have said they may have been inaccurate.

Unfortunately UC does not process overpayments in a timely fashion as other work takes a priority. This can mean that errors are not raised with claimants straightaway and therefore the claimant is not able to deal with it e.g. in your case challenge employers payroll. But you also have responsibility in checking if UC payments are on the correct basis.

Myci85

Thank you all.

Yes I was checking continuously at the time, and providing my actual earnings directly to them. I was having to endlessly try and chase them to update and let me know the overpayment due once they'd recalculated as I wanted to pay it straight back. Frustratingly, the period they're telling me now it relates to ended Feb22, and they can see that in May 22 after more chasing them, I was told what the final overpayment was, and immediately paid it off (they don't seem able to see their end that I paid it, but i can see it leaving my bank). That employment ended in Jan 22, and I had received my p45 so all should have been up to date by then, so I trusted that overpayment was the final one. Frustratingly I didn't check my hmrc records at that time as I believed to to be sorted.

If we do indeed owe money still, fine, it will be repaid. But I would like to check their current calculations for that debt are based on what I actually earned, not what has been incorrectly reported to hmrc, as £1690 is not a small sum to part with if a mistake has been made somewhere.

We had no savings at the time, they have confirmed the overpayments were due to delayed reporting of income.

peteuk

So given that the overpayment is £1690 - and is wage related you would have earnt approx. £3380.00 more in that month.

(I know wage is deducted at 55p per pound from UC and I have crudely doubled the amount for ease)

If that was in one month then yes, I would expect you to have noticed this. As you know, UC is paid monthly and a monthly statement provided. Was it back pay from a pay rise?

Myci85

To update:

I have managed to get hold of my old payroll company, and they have sent me all relevant payslips. I have cross referenced them against the amounts I was actually paid, and the amounts reported to HMRC. The payslips match my received income, but HMRC are showing that I received over £4k more for that period than I actually did. So if Universal Credit are using the information with HMRC, they will believe I was paid significantly more than I was.

HMRC have advised I need to preferably get the payroll company to send in the information so they can sort the discrepancy, but failing that, I need to send them a letter including any evidence I have. It will then take 3-5 weeks for the online account to be updated.

Does anyone know what the process will then be UC side? Presumably I need to wait for HMRC to have the correct info before requesting a mandatory reconsideration?

Not surprisingly, despite 2 people telling me they would raise it to a manager and I'd receive a call within 48 hours, I'm still waiting.

huckster

You can raise RTI earnings disputes for every UC assessment period where the earnings were wrongly reported by contacting UC helpline or UC journal if you still have a claim.

You can request a Job Centre appointment, where you can take with you all of the payslips and the Job Centre will raise the disputes, attaching copies of the payslips.

Robbie64

I wonder if your employer reported your earnings twice. Is the overpayment twice what you actually received for any of the pay periods, or maybe a combination of some pay periods?

The information that HMRC uses for the annual amounts of income earned, tax paid, NI paid etc is based on what the employer reports as the YTD totals but if a pay period is reported twice it will show a set of monthly figures on your HMRC account that do not add up to YTD totals / the amount that appears on your P60.

My pension provider reported twice to HMRC my pension payment for April 2026. The cumulative total listed below the monthly amounts is correct and matches what appears on my payslip for each month. However, there is an additional amount (a duplicate entry) for April which isn't included in this total and the following appears on my HMRC account:

The individual amounts do not add up to the total. When this happens we use the total amounts as your figures for the tax year.

Fortunately, it looks like UC don't use the pension payment amounts reported to HMRC to update monthly UC assessments. However, if this was wages rather than a pension I fully expect my UC would, at some stage, have been reduced and possibly i would have had an overpayment (which of course I wouldn't have had, the error is from my pension provider and I didn't really receive an additional amount in April 2026).

Myci85

Thank you @huckster, I don't have a current claim so no access to journal (though when I did have access I found it to be the most infuriating way of communicating with them!) But good to know about going in to the job centre if need be to sort it.

@Robbie64 It is honestly just a total mess. There is one month where the pay was duplicated, one month where there are two payments reported and neither one is even close to what I was actually paid, another that just doesn't match, and then my final pay from that job in Feb was reported correctly, but there is then a payment reported in March when I was no longer even with that employer. You're right that the total matches the P60 total, but I'm guessing that as UC is calculated monthly, it will be the monthly reporting that they use.

I'm assuming that the monthly RTI earnings will match those listed on my hmrc online tax account?

huckster

For UC to have calculated an overpayment, the employers must have late reported earnings information or you reported the earnings but after UC payment had been made for an incorrect amount.

The amounts you previously paid to DWP Debt Management are not related to this overpayment In my opinion. You should ask DWP Debt Management what the payments related to.