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Forum Home  →  Discussion  →  Benefits for older people  →  Thread

Overpayment of Pension Credit (GC)

Weeman
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Service assurance team - Blackburn With Darwen Borough Council

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Joined: 2 May 2013

Hi all
My customer lost her PIP in July 2019.  I requested a mandatory reconsideration and sent a copy of the same letter to the Pension Service informing them of the change.  No change was made to the Pension Credit award.

After 12 weeks, I receive a notice that the PIP mandatory reconsideration had resulted in the decision remaining that she did not qualify.  Whilst compiling the appeal, I telephoned the Pension Service requesting why her award had not yet been changed.  The answer, they had the details that PIP had been lost and that they were unsure why the award had not been amended.  Apparently, they did not receive my notification but did receive notification ‘by some other mean’ (I suspect some other data matching exercise).  No correspondence was received from the Pension Service between notification of the lost PIP (and the mandatory reconsideration) and the overpayment letter this week.

My customer has now received an overpayment letter for £1250 and is obviously upset as we thought we had done all we could / should have done.

Is there a case on the recoverability of an official error overpayment?  If so, I would be grateful if anyone could point me in the right direction of the legislation / caselaw which may help.

I will continue with the PIP appeal but this is just another issue to deal with.
Thank you

Mike Hughes
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Senior welfare rights officer - Salford City Council Welfare Rights Service

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No failure to disclose and you followed up as soon as reasonably practicable. Not seeing why that would ever be recoverable although they’ll always try.

Daphne
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Jon (CANY)
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Welfare benefits - Craven CAB, North Yorkshire

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Does the overpayment letter actually say it’s recoverable? Sometimes night doesn’t follow day, and a recoverability decision does not always follow an overpayment decision.

Anyway, if you can’t establish that you (on your client’s behalf) disclosed the material fact, then consider ... WAR:
https://www.rightsnet.org.uk/forums/viewthread/11995/P15

Paul_Treloar_AgeUK
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Information and advice resources - Age UK

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Jon (CHDCA) - 16 December 2019 11:33 PM

Does the overpayment letter actually say it’s recoverable? Sometimes night doesn’t follow day, and a recoverability decision does not always follow an overpayment decision.

Anyway, if you can’t establish that you (on your client’s behalf) disclosed the material fact, then consider ... WAR:
https://www.rightsnet.org.uk/forums/viewthread/11995/P15

Yes, check the details of the overpayment decision carefully and it’s almost always worthwhile challenging these.

However, not sure you can wholly rely on WAR - read back through this thread from Daphne’s post which highlights a couple of decisions concerning disclosure by the client Trawl of pensioners on PC with SDP - overpayments of sdp being recovered

Obviously in this case, it does look like disclosure has taken place so that’s a far better argument to put forward.