Overpayments of UC

I have had two of these cases pop up lately and I was wondering if this is widespread or if anyone has any thoughts.

I have not seen either case in detail yet but they both seem to be as follows;

Cl makes UC but does not confirm ID. UC continue to pay for some time (probably 3 assessment periods?)  and then stop and ask for all the UC back. It isn’t clear what actions were taken by UC to ask the cl to confirm ID.

When someone makes a UC claim they are usually given a deadline by which time they must confirm ID, from memory this is before the end of the first assessment period.  This then raises the question of why, in the absence of ID, did UC continue paying.

I know that the relevant regs have sidestepped the old ‘no recovery at common law’/official error rules but it still begs the question regarding why UC didn’t follow their own procedures and stop paying?

Regardless of the regulations it would seem to be against natural justice that a possible error by UC could cause a recoverable overpayment of something that, but for the lack of ID, the claimants were entitled to anyway- in my view the common law doctrine of unjust enrichment has little force here, the claimants were arguably not unjustly enriched?

I think this is in substance the same as a covid retrospective checking situation.

To decide that there was no entitlement to UC retrospectively, the decision maker must be satisfied that on balance of probability the person was not who they say they are. It’s not enough to say they didn’t meet some imposed ID requirement.

This is very similar to the ‘retrospective verification’ cases which are discussed at length in other threads which I would encourage you to dig out.

Something that really needs to be understood is that the proposition that “all UC payments are recoverable” does not mean that UC can simply declare funds overpaid whenever they like. The decision making which awarded the benefit needs to be revised or superseded in such a way that your actual benefit receipts are higher than your entitlement so that you have been overpaid. Once that is done, the extra step which existed in legacy benefits of showing that the overpayment was recoverable by reason of claimant misrepresentation or failure to declare is no longer necessary.

The only difference between legacy benefit overpayments and UC overpayments is that the final step of deciding whether the overpayment is one that is recoverable is no longer required. It has nothing to do with recovery at common law, unjust enrichment or natural justice - its just the familiar statutory process but with one step removed.

In the cases you are talking about, the DWP is in terms saying “We paid you benefit on the basis that you are person A. It turns out you are not person A, so we are revising the decisions awarding you benefit on the ground of mistake of fact under reg 9(b) D&A. The new decision is that you have no entitlement to benefit and therefore everything we have paid you is an overpayment. The overpayment is always recoverable because this is a UC case.”

Your client can challenge that decision by mandatory reconsideration, most obviously by providing the DWP with the appropriate evidence that they are in fact person A.

Please see this post:

https://www.rightsnet.org.uk/forums/viewthread/17268/

I MR’d the decision and it was successful, base on advice from people in this post.

:)