A client of mine has an overpayment of £1619.12 which she does not dispute. However, it is being recovered at a rate of £68.16 a fortnight because she is on IB. When I rang to query it I was told that they had included her DLA as income and so felt she had a high disposable income. Can this be right? I know for most benefit matters DLA is disregarded as income but have had a look through CPAG and can see nothing about this for an o/p?
Thanks for your help.

There is often confusion over this. This is not a benefit issue as such but a debt one. What the DWP are saying is that they are taking the DLA into account on the income side of any real or hypothetical financial statement, which they can do.

When I used to do debt casework then we would do the same but also balance it out on the expenditure side (i.e. taxi fares for the mob component, extra laundry costs, etc – care component). A good debt worker can also ‘hide’ income under other categories. She should see a debt adviser at her local CAB to help re-negotiate the weekly repayments.

i agree.
back in my DSS days, while IS overpayments deductions were limited to the prescribed maximum, the rule was that CB overpayments could be compulsory recovered at a rate of a third of personal benefit (IB in this case) if the claimant didn't make any offer of repayment. i can't find this in the regs so i'm assuming it was an administrative rule, recovery being a SoS function. the claimant was asked to make an arrangement, and the offer was was normally accepted, unless it was very unreasonable. i doubt this has changed, except for 'debt recovery' now being highly prioritized and incentivised...

Additionally, (used recently when applying for a DHP, awaiting decision)
It might be worth referring to S 73(14) S.S.Contributions &Benefits Act.

“A payment to or in respect of any person which is attributable to his entitlement to the mobility component, and the right to receive such a payment, shall (except in prescribed circumstances and for prescribed purposes) be disregarded in applying any enactment or instrument under which regard is to be had to a person’s means.”

The debt worker when I worked ooop North always disregarded mob but included the rest.