OVERPAYMENTS -TIME LIMITS

two questions in one thread -

1: is there a statute of limitations in terms of the overpayments that have been created due to RTI?
most cases I have come across the RTI has only gone back as far as 2013 but I have one case that’s just popped up with an overpayment dating back to 2009 - in all fairness I don’t know for sure yet if its to do with RTI however I’m just checking….

2: if you had a crisis loan back in the day and it was recovered through an attachment of earnings over 5 years ago - how can you prove that its been paid off when DWP suddenly rear their ugly head to recover it again when you don’t have the wage slips and you don’t work for that company anymore and the company doesn’t have any records either….
Thanks

In relation to the first question, any time barring would take effect/run from the last date that recovery action was taken. No recovery action can possibly be taken before a decision has been made that the claimant has been overpaid.

So, in the extremely unlikely event that the DWP discovers today that I was co-habiting with my generously paid partner for the three years during which I claimed JSA as a single person between 2000 and 2002, it is entirely at liberty to make an overpayment decision today. This means that RTI information that comes to light now can result in an overpayment for 2009.

What time barring does is to prevent a decision being made in 2009 that I was overpaid and the DWP doing nothing to recover the overpayment in the intervening period where this is longer than six years (with the caveat that recovery via deductions from benefit is not time barred).