Thought i'd make everyone smile with this one:

Client came to office with an overpayment letter regarding Income Support to tune of £19,000....yes £19,000. This occurred because when client claimed in 1988 he was awarded both I.S and ICB (or Invalidity Benefit if thats what it was called many moons ago) at full rate. It has only just come to light!!

We appealed it and won, the figure was written off but i was astounded at the length of time it took for the DWP to notice. Do they not audit their files i wonder?

Fantastic for client although as always a downside, he lived to his means and now needs debt advice as his income has halved and he can't meet payments.

Funny old world us benefits advisers live in.

Glad you got this written off for him however when you close the file i'd advise caution if you only routinely store them for 6-7 years.

I would suggest that you store something such as this for at least 16 years - this has proved invaluable to us when debt centre suddenly pop up and try to collect debts that were actually written off at Tribunal.

And yes you're right - us WELFS do live in a funny old world, it's like a parallel universe