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Forum Home  →  Discussion  →  Universal credit administration  →  Thread

Deduction from UC award for “fines”

Hattie S.
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Income Maximisation Team, LB Camden

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Total Posts: 12

Joined: 4 October 2018

Another day, another completely inexplicable deduction from a UC award…

I have a client who is having an amount deducted monthly from her UC for what is only referred to as “fines.” The client is quite a vulnerable lady and she says she has no idea about any fines she owes.

There is a note in the UC journal referring to a court setting an amount that can be deducted monthly. It is not even clear if this is relating to a specific court decision regarding a fine owed by this client or whether it is generally referring to the laws about how much can be deducted from a UC award for court fines.

Does anybody have any idea who I can contact to try and unravel what this fine is for? UC themselves of course are no help and as this is not listed as a benefit overpayment I don’t see any point in contacting DWP debt management.

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

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Joined: 17 June 2010

Have just sent you a DM.

Paul Stockton
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Epping Forest CAB

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The information should be available from the registry of judgments, orders and fines: https://rojof.org.uk/Fines.shtml

Rebecca Lough
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Welfare rights - Greenwich Council

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Joined: 23 November 2018

I’ve actually found that Debt Management are quite helpful in at least being able to say which Court the creditor is, plus the size of the debt and roughly the date of issue which goes a long way to clarifying it. In my experience if clients aren’t aware of them then it’s normally for things like not paying for a train fare or parking fines which have escalated.

The journal note is likely to refer to this: https://blog.shelter.org.uk/2021/03/high-court-rules-dwps-universal-credit-deductions-policy-unlawful/ which reduced the level that fines were being recovered at so you might see that her fine was being deducted at a much higher rate before that.