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Retrospective alterations to online account payment details
I think there have been other posts on this subject but not on this specific issue.
Cl has allegedly been overpaid a considerable sum of UC which is being recovered by Debt Management. The actual overpayment decision is considerably outside the 13 months for an MR.
Cl has looked in her UC account and it appears that they were not in fact paid any UC for the period in question - could this be because the account was retrospectively altered to show a zero entitlement rather than what was actually paid? Obviously we can get bank statements to prove the payments (or lack of) but it seems quite odd that no payments are shown on the account.
Has anyone had any experience of this - can we take it that there were in fact no payments , and therefore no overpayments either?
Cl has looked in her UC account and it appears that they were not in fact paid any UC for the period in question - could this be because the account was retrospectively altered to show a zero entitlement rather than what was actually paid? Obviously we can get bank statements to prove the payments (or lack of) but it seems quite odd that no payments are shown on the account.
Has anyone had any experience of this - can we take it that there were in fact no payments , and therefore no overpayments either?
This is definitely my experience - the UC account accessible by claimant gets overwritten with the revised entitlement.
You could request the previous decisions via SAR.
Not been on a journal in one of these cases in a while but from what I recall, the payment statement should include a bit which says “if you think we’ve made a mistake” or some such and if you click that, it will give you a date by reference to which the MR time limit is calculated. In a case where the decision has been changed after the fact, the date given will be the later date on which the amended statement was uploaded.
Another route via SAR would be the CIS Searchlight record which would detail the UC payments.
Thanks all, I have asked the cl. to have a look at their bank statements in the first instance as this is much quicker than an SAR
after coming across similar instances for some time and after discussing this latest post around the virtual office yesterday, we have basically reiterated that the best policy is to advise all UC clients to routinely save screenshots of their payment details every month ...some clients now do this but I completely accept that many will not or will forget to etc….this whole UC practice is appalling in my view, as I have previously commented in other threads
.this whole UC practice is appalling in my view,
I must echo that. The retrospective amendment of statements is one of the worst features now. I wonder if there’s any way we can feed that back to DWP…
It’s a falsification plain and simple, even if done without any wrongful motive. We have someone who we don’t think has been paid their full back payment, but according to the journal, it shows she was paid it two years before the decision was made.
.this whole UC practice is appalling in my view,
I must echo that. The retrospective amendment of statements is one of the worst features now. I wonder if there’s any way we can feed that back to DWP…
We have fed that back on numerous occasions!! But I will do so again…
Nobody ever agrees with me about this, but the problem is not the ‘retrospective alterations’ ; the problem is how the page is described.
The point of the “payments” page is not to list the ‘payments’. It is misleading in that respect. What it does is to record the operative decisions which are currently in effect. When the operative decision is changed, the record changes accordingly. If that were made clear, there would be less of an objection to what is going on.
I can sort of accept Elliot’s point but if this is all the payments record is then surely it is incumbent on UC to provide an easily accessible version of previous decisions. I would suggest that it would be unreasonable for DWP to say or imply that UC claimants must take screen shots of each notice as it arrives or risk losing part of the rationale for a decision, its not as if they are sending anything on paper that claimants could easily file away
Nobody ever agrees with me about this, but the problem is not the ‘retrospective alterations’ ; the problem is how the page is described.
The point of the “payments” page is not to list the ‘payments’. It is misleading in that respect. What it does is to record the operative decisions which are currently in effect. When the operative decision is changed, the record changes accordingly. If that were made clear, there would be less of an objection to what is going on.
I think it’s more misleading than that. As well as the page with the monthly payment amount, there are the individual payment statements which clearly say “Your payment this month is £334 This will be paid by 8pm on 8 June 2022” and then they itemise all the elements and deductions. If a person was actually paid £652.48 on 8 June, but two months later the statement explicitly says something different then that’s surely a problem with the retrospective alterations, rather than a mere description?
I really think the system should preserve every decision/payment statement so that one can see what was actually paid, and the compare it with what DWP is now saying should have been paid.
From an adviser’s point of view, it’s really hard to work out what OP or UP there’s been if the only way to easily see what the payment was is to look at the claimant’s bank statement. And I can’t imagine many of my tenants being able to work out whether they’ve eventually been paid correctly or had the correct OP decision when the system is so misleading.
Given that there appear to be no Customer Service Standards in force at DWP (al least, none that I can locate. The 2014 document apparently having been “withdrawn” without any replacement), they effectively have “carte blanche” to do as they please.
I agree that there is absolutely a problem with how the page is described. However, that does not take away in any way the appalling retrospective revision of pages. Imagine if such a system existed in any other context.
No ignore me. Sorry I was mistaken in thinking R(H) 3/05 might apply. It was a hunch given to me by something in Sweet and Maxwell
[ Edited: 31 Aug 2022 at 10:53 am by Dan Manville ]This is what I have just received back from DWP -
UC design are currently exploring areas of the overpayment and underpayment process to improve the efficiency, accuracy and customer experience. The discovery phase has highlighted the issue of previous versions of statements not being visible to claimants.
Changes which would allow the claimant to see both the original and amended statement require complex behind the scenes work to make it technically possible. The design team are now exploring various design improvements for the whole process which will addressed in priority order. Once we have any further update on statements we will share these with colleagues and external partners.
So it’s in the queue….
Ah yes, priority order. I remember Neil Couling talking about that at GMWRAG. Changes in an instant at the whim of ministers etc. Everything we would want done for claimants is well down the list. Anything that brings in money is near the top i.e. cap, sanctions, deductions.
I am not an IT expert but why exactly is it “complex” to track changes in payment statements? Someone here previously suggested “Archived” section in the online account, where statements could be stored, if they have been subsequently amended.
Should we set up a gofundme page for a smart 6th former to fix this for the DWP?
If only it were that simple. The original system was based on agile design and that fell apart some years ago. The many contractors involved in UC development have long since been frozen out in favour of rebuilding in-house IT skills for big projects. Whilst this is a laudable aim it does mean you have a system which
- was always designed to never talk to legacy systems.
- is a heady mix of different contractors approach to coding regardless of the standards set.
- now includes modules built in-house to a set standard which have to interact with modules previously built outside of DWP. It’s unclear what commitment the contractors have to support those modules since they were frozen out.
It’s not a given that those contractors will have given the in-house people access to every last aspect of their build and it’s not a given that any new built functionality will work with existing modules. Whilst it is in many senses an exemplar of a government IT screw up on a monumental scale it is also fair to take what DWP say about fixing any given aspect at face value. I like the sentiment but ain’t no sixth former going to be fixing this any time soon.
Also worth noting discussions on other threads here about priorities. Whatever we see as a priority for claimants is not necessarily a priority for DWP doing their day job or indeed ministers. If the latter suddenly get obliged to add back in the £20 uplift for example then something else has to give. Finite resources and all that.
Am I alone in wishing that we could just go back to paper claims, the cl’s who came to the office with a carrier bag of mixed up letters probably had a better history of their claims than UC claimants seem to. ( or am i just getting old and technophobic?)
The problem very many IT projects get into is they are fundamentally poorly designed from the ground up. This often makes it difficult to alter things that should have been easy. A piece of code that should have zero impact on what you’re trying to do has somehow gotten tangled with a bunch of secondary systems, meaning you’d have to unravel the whole jumper to repair a hole in your sock.
IMHO it’s one of the main reasons why UC should be scrapped - because it is a failure as a digital benefits system.
They could introduce secondary systems, but if not done well they might just end up causing more complications and errors.
Am I alone in wishing that we could just go back to paper claims, the cl’s who came to the office with a carrier bag of mixed up letters probably had a better history of their claims than UC claimants seem to. ( or am i just getting old and technophobic?)
No, deffo not alone and, yes, I agree. There are plenty of claimants out there who will have a more accurate record of their claim than UC ever will.
I am a former IT specialist (database and systems design and development) and I don’t think it sounds difficult. But if they’re trying not to spend too much on putting things right, and are prioritising other things, then it just won’t get done.
An easy solution would be for them to issue the monthly payment statement as a PDF via the journal (like they do with other decisions letters). They can have that idea for free.
What actionable disadvantage is there to the claimant? I can’t really think of anything more than it being a PITA for us.
I think the disadvantage is the lack of evidence of the actual situation at the time of the statement, and what was paid at the time. a) people should be entitled to have an accurate record of their receipt of benefits, but b) also it has been frustrating that statements have been retroactively changed when I have e.g. been helping someone with their DHP claim because of being benefit capped etc., and then the statements start showing that in fact the person wasn’t ever benefit capped (for example). It’s much better (in the case of underpayments) when they just issue an underpayment letter, explaining exactly the dates someone should have been entitled to whatever element/rate, rather than just retroactively smoothing past statements.
What actionable disadvantage is there to the claimant? I can’t really think of anything more than it being a PITA for us.
I like your “devil’s advocate” cape :D
If we cannot help client, in an efficient and timely manner, that it is a real disadvantage to the clients, whose UC award for example is reduced by recovery of an overpayment we are trying to challenge.
Also, not only my actual client is suffering from this IT ineptitude but also other potential clients who I don’t even get to see as I am bogged down and spent unreasonable amount of time of trying to get a clear picture of the situation.