Forum Home → Discussion → Universal credit administration → Thread
Deduction from UC award for “fines”
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.
Have just sent you a DM.
The information should be available from the registry of judgments, orders and fines: https://rojof.org.uk/Fines.shtml
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.