UC overpayment: evidence for waiver

Our client has a UC overpayment. DWP accept that it was due to official error but are, of course, still recovering it. We have good evidence that the client’s mental health has suffered solely as a result of the DWP’s error and its recovery action. This raises the possibility, at least in theory, that in seeking a waiver we can show that the cost of treatment to the NHS is greater than the amount of the overpayment.

Has anyone successfully argued this, and, if so, how did you prove the cost of the treatment?

I think it would be more profitable just to focus on the mental health impacts themselves, rather than the financial cost to the taxpayer of those impacts. I think it would be tremendously difficult to calculate those costs and, in any case, I don’t see any reason why operational DWP staff would care what the cost to unrelated NHS budgets are.