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payments of 1p a month
This is academic now but I’d be curious of peoples’ thoughts.
When recovering overpayments the regs state that a payment of 1p a month must be left in place; presumably to protect and passporting; in my case there should have been a passported award of HB in place.
But there was n penny, the o/p recovery used all the award. We spoke to UC who simply said “speak to debt management” (do debt management still refuse to speak to us?).
In this case the client found work and the problem evaporated, but it’s got potential to disrupt people in temp or specified accomodation.
I’ve been talking to Debt Management repeatedly for the past few weeks. They’ve been lovely… and misled me repeatedly. Complaint now submitted. I preferred it when they were just a black hole.
They won’t speak to me without the claimant being ‘with me’. And they ignore letters with mandates.
Interestingly inconsistent then.
I think an inquiry is needed into the unapproachability and vast but undefined power of Debt Management. Even other parts of DWP seem scared of/unable to communicate with them.
Like others, I have found them unhelpful and averse to responding to contact of any sort. I may have told this tale before, but I once asked for an email address for DM. ‘They will give that to you when you get through to them’ said my DWP interlocutor, who then bannered off before I could point out the obvious problem. Catch-22 rides again.
That said, I had one case recently when someone very nice from DM called me and offered to put a UC deduction on hold for three months while we untangled the blatant DWP cock-up behind an overpayment. I was hoping it was a new dawn; but probably not.