Forced to move, penalised twice by UC

Claimant moves to an FSUC area – a forced move, for her own safety.

Is forced to claim UC and move off IRESA. Loses SDP etc.

DWP does not complete UCMGP1 for more than a month.

Owing to this delay, claimant is (presumably, because DWP has given no details or explanation) paid IRESA and UC at the same time.

Recoverable overpayment of £1280.57 sent to claimant.

Claimant asks for MR, explaining the (distressing) background of her move and forced UC claim and saying that the delay over the UCMGP1 is not her fault.

MRN comes – sets out dates and amount of overpayment, reproduces claimant’s statements - but DM makes no statements or findings of fact at all.

States bluntly that all overpayments are recoverable.

I have reminded DWP that they have the discretion not to recover, and that they have, somewhere, a code of conduct regarding hardship.

Complaint made about DWP official error/maladministration.

If the claimant had been unsupported, they would have been left to suffer a double financial blow, and just coldly told that they could not appeal.

This is an appalling system.

Update.

DWP have never provided a calculation of the overpayment nor did they ever provide facts or reasoning. We wrote to them in February to ask for this.

We had authorisation which was valid for 6 months (thought that was plenty to get a letter back)  - but DWP replied after that 6 months was over, refusing to deal with us on the grounds that the authorisation was out of date.

An appeal was lodged in order to force details out of DWP. We should not have had to do this.

The overpayment was recalculated in the claimant’s favour and the appeal sub contained a revised decision - only a small change, but until we got the sub we didn’t even know about this.

DWP do not dispute that it was their delay that caused the overpayment - they just propose to do nothing about it., sit back and collect the money. Still no reply to my letter of February or to emails over the last two months re. the authorisation.

Complaint escalated.

Just a thought,  which benefits was overpaid, was it IRESA or UC?  I thought that a claim for UC supersedes an existing claim for IR ESA and it looks like that UC was in fact paid. Could this mean that it was in fact IR ESA that was overpaid, not UC?  If it was IR ESA that was overpaid then surely the existing regs about notification, ‘official error’ and recovery would still apply rather than the more draconian UC rules.

It looks to me like it was ESA(ir) that was overpaid in the first instance, but Reg 10 of the UC(TP) Regs applies: what DWP refers to as an “overlapping payment”.  This means the overpayment of ESA(ir) is accounted for as income other than earnings in the UC calculation.  If UC has already been paid for an assessment period in which that should have happened, what started as an ESA overpayment effectively morphs into a UC overpayment.  The only defence to recovery is incorrect calculation or discretionary write-off, although I suspect a lot of people will be able to buy time by finding flaws in the decision making and notification process: a lot of these UC overpayments will be premature for that reason and Tribunals ought to send DWP away to start again.  In some cases the decision making might be so poor that Tribunals will say DWP has failed to establish the existence of an overpayment at all so there isn’t one, and they cannot go away to start again.

The utter lack of clarity of the information given so far and the refusal by the DWP to give any other details still leave that matter rather murky. I would agree with your analysis however. On receipt of further and better details, perhaps we will know!

How about a Subject Access Request - I understand that it is more effective and all encompassing under GDPR.

A fascinating update on this case, which proceeded to a second hearing a few days ago. I claim no credit for doing the appeal, one of my colleagues did it!

The case has been adjourned again.

From the Decision Notice:
• Judge notes that claimant lost SDP and EDP with no transitional measures
• the lack of such protection was held to be unlawful discrimination in breach of ECHR in the case of P and AR, R (On the Application Of) v Secretary of State for Work And Pensions [2018] EWHC 1474 (Admin)
• around the time of the last hearing, TP measures were announced and the recent Budget indicated they would proceed from January 2019
• Judge directs the DWP to assess the claimant under this scheme to determine if any overpayment of UC is offset by TP award
• DWP to advise the tribunal when this is done, and recovery of the overpayment should not proceed while the overpayment is subject to appeal