The DWP have not placed online a copy of their guidance on recovery of overpayments.
This is despite the fact that the Court of Appeal said in B v SSWP [2005] EWCA Civ 929:
43. It is axiomatic in modern government that a lawful policy is necessary if an executive discretion of the significance of the one now under consideration is to be exercised, as public law requires it to be exercised, consistently from case to case but adaptably to the facts of individual cases. If – as seems to be the situation here – such a policy has been formulated and is regularly used by officials, it is the antithesis of good government to keep it in a departmental drawer. Among its first recipients (indeed, among the prior consultees, I would have thought) should be bodies such as the Child Poverty Action Group and the Citizens Advice Bureaux. Their clients are fully as entitled as departmental officials to know the terms of the policy on recovery of overpayments, so that they can either claim to be within it or put forward reasons for disapplying it, and so that the conformity of the policy and its application with principles of public law can be appraised, although two such policies were evidently described or shown to Newman J in R (Larusai) v Secretary of State for Work and Pensions [2003] EWHC 371 Admin: see §15 and 19.
So in the interest of assisting good government I am providing this copy….
The fact that the policy on when to waive recovery is kept more or less hidden from advisers and claimants is probably in part responsible for the very low number of cases in which recovery is waived (a mere 137 cases for the whole of 2009 according to the DWP - revealed following an FOI request).
Documents attached are:
1. October 2011 version of the Overpayment Recovery Guide (apparently most up to date version). I am informed this is shortly to be replaced by a new manual - the “Benefit Overpayment Recovery Guide”- apparently from end of this month.
2. P&P 32/08- some additional points on waiver operation- referred to in the above document so presumably still current.
3. The 2010 guidance on when recovery will be waived.
Martin
[ Edited: 4 Mar 2012 at 02:22 pm by Martin Williams ]
