A mum told to pay back more than £8,600 of Universal Credit overpayments has been cleared of repaying the balance, a High Court Judge has ruled. The woman, a mum of two disabled children, received a letter from the DWP saying she owed £8,623.20.
She fought the demand as she had repeatedly checked her benefits, and a High Court judge found the department had acted unlawfully in not publishing its overpayment debt waiver criteria, The Express reports.
She was one of some 370,000 claimants to receive overpayments due to a DWP error in a single year, reports ITV News. The woman was in her overdraft when she received the letter from DWP - she was also using a foodbank and working part time on top of caring for her children.
The error came from a change in circumstances that affected her entitlement. However, the mum had told DWP on four occasions one of her children had started an apprenticeship.
She did this as she wanted to ensure she was paid the correct amount, but, according to the report, she was assured her payments were correct. By the time DWP realised the error, she had spent the money on daily living costs.
The department refused to waive the debt three times so she took the case up with a tribunal. The tribunal found the overpayments were due to the DWP’s error, but they could not overturn the demand for the repayments. She wrote to the department to explain her difficult situation and wrote a second time to explain she had been advised the debt could be waived.
The DWP sent a response saying it could not do this as she had used all the department’s appeal processes. She said she felt a sense of despair at this time, saying: “There were times I was starting to wonder if it was better I wasn’t there.”
She eventually launched a judicial review of the decision with the High Court. This review focused on the criteria of the Government’s Benefits Overpayment Recovery Guide, which outlines when the DWP can waive a debt - but this information was not publicly available.
A judge determined it was unlawful for the department to keep the waiver guide unavailable to the public. The department told ITV News it has since published the waiver advice online. They also found the department was in breach of public sector equality legislation for pursuing the mum for the debt.
The court also determined the mum should not have to repay the amount as she had received the overpayments relying on incorrect information from the DWP, and the overpayments were to her detriment. This was because she spent the money on day-to-day living expenses and had lost out on other means of income available to her, as a result of her understanding that she was entitled to the additional money.
Emma Vincent Miller, the solicitor who represented the woman, urged others who have been overpaid benefits in error to make a waiver request to DWP Debt Management. A Government spokesperson told Express.co.uk: “We support millions of people every year and our priority is they get the benefits they are entitled to as soon as possible and they receive a supportive and compassionate service.
“We carefully balance our duty to the taxpayer to recover overpayments with our support for claimants on means tested benefits, and safeguards are in place to ensure deductions are manageable, including payment plans. Deductions help protect claimants from enforcement actions such as eviction, ensure priority debts such as child maintenance are still addressed and recover taxpayers’ money when overpayments are made.”
Universal Credit claimants have to report a change in circumstances to the DWP, such as taking up a new job or changing address, as this can affect how much they should receive.
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