Overpayment of wages - adjustment of a previous award?

Little bit unsure on how to approach this one….

Client was working during December, earnings from which reduced his UC January payment.

However his employer made an error in calculating client’s wage - client had been incorrectly paid for a period during which they were off sick,  but hadn’t said anything at the time becaue he had thought it was some form of sickness pay (however client couldn’t get SSP because weekly earnings not high enough). This was over a two week period, with the employer overpaying by £200. They’ve just this week asked for it back (client was a temp over christmas and no longer works for the employer).’

As a consequence of this the client’s UC award has been based on incorrect earnings and he’s been underpaid UC. What would be the way to go about resolving this from the point of view of Universal Credit? Would it be a late challenge/appeal against his UC January award? Any idea if they’d be likely to recalculate and pay higher amount based on correct earnings?

| have actually spoken with the employer who have said that their policy is to write off these sorts of overpayments if they don’t recover within a certain amount of time. In fact, they were very understanding and given the client’s circumstances they have agreed to write it off. However, I’m slightly weary in case they choose to chase this up at a later date and thus it’s too late to recover things with the DWP regarding the incorrect UC award.

Any thoughts on this would be appreciated, cheers.

My immediate thought is that the UC award isn’t incorrect. It is based on the earnings the client received. Just because it is an overpayment doesn’t mean it is not ‘earnings’.

I don’t think this is anything to do with the DWP, but the client should try to get something in writing from the employer agreeing that they won’t pursue it at a later date.

I don’t see any grounds for challenging the UC award as it was correctly calculated on the client’s actual earnings at the time. The subsequent discovery that his earnings were too high doesn’t change that.

Cheers Will I believe you are correct about that - DWP have calculated award correctly based on earnings. Client’s employer is cooperating and letting it be. Cheers