SDP Gateway during COVID-19: ongoing ‘repatriation’ to legacy benefits

CPAG have received clarification from DWP in response to advice by DWP that ‘the repartition process has been suspended due to the Covid-19 crisis’ (in respect of claimants who have breached the SDP Gateway and are being returned to legacy benefits).

DWP now state:

“Operational colleagues are continuing to prioritise the cases that are either identified prior to an award of UC having been made, or who have had the repatriation process started (i.e. those cases where we have already made contact with the claimant) and these will be completed in due course.

Due to the impact of Covid-19, those claims which are identified after an award of UC has already been made and have not yet been contacted by the Department, may be contacted at a slower pace due to operational pressures in the Department.”

In short, people are still being moved back to legacy benefits, just at a slower rate.  Where UC is not in payment, DWP will prioritise ‘repatriation’, otherwise it will happen more ‘slowly’.

Please let us know if you have clients experiencing hardship due to delays, who have neither legacy benefits or UC in payment .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).

CPAG have received further info from DWP as follows. Please get in touch (.(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)) if you have a client in this position and we will be happy to raise it with DWP on your behalf. Claimants should NOT be asked by the Jobcentre to close their UC claim.

“...the impact of COVID-19 on the department has been unprecedented and consequently operational priorities have been re-focused. Operational resources have been re-directed to deal with the large volumes of new claims to Universal Credit. Therefore is it very difficult at this stage to give any timescales as to when this work will be completed, but we remain committed to completing this repatriation work as soon as possible.

With regards to your second point, it is not normal procedure to ask a claimant to close their Universal Credit claim to enable the repatriation process to commence. In Mr W’s case, the request to have him close his Universal Credit claim appears to have been made in error following a conversation with a work coach…

If the claimant is aware that they have moved to Universal Credit in error, then it is advisable for them to contact their work-coach, or their case manager stating that they had entitlement to the Severe Disability Premium. Their work coach or case manager would then signpost their case to the correct team to handle the repatriation back to legacy benefits.

Our standard procedure in these cases, is that a claimants Universal Credit claim will only be closed once the legacy benefit has been put into payment, and the Universal Credit claim closure action is undertaken by a case manager, not the claimant.

If you become aware of instances where we have specifically asked the claimant to close their own Universal Credit claim to enable the repatriation process to commence, then please provide me with the claimants details so we can investigate further and resolve the situation.”