A woman was left horrified after her vital benefit payments were stopped by the government because 'according to their records' she was dead.
Ann Smith, 65, has revealed that she relies on the crucial payments made by the Department of Work and Pensions to live, but was left shocked when they were ceased.
The reason the DWP gave for stopping the payments was because, according to its records, she had died in August, report Liverpool Echo.
The 65-year-old, who lives in Kirkdale, a district of Liverpool, Merseyside, was forced to stop working years ago after developing a number of deliberating conditions that weakened her bones - meaning she regularly had breaks and fractures - including Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) and osteoporosis.
As a former care worker, Ms Smith said she relied on Personal Independence Payments and Employment Support Allowance to get by, and started getting concerned when neither of these payments went into her account last month.
Speaking about her distress, she said: "I rely on that money so I was worried when it didn't go in. So I contacted the DWP."
On contacting the governmental department, Ms Smith was told that her benefits had stopped because, according to its records, she had died in August this year.
Ms Smith said: "I couldn't believe it, I said 'Well, that's news to me'. I even got sent a letter addressed to the executor of my will."
She went on to add: "They haven't told me how they could make a mistake like this, no one even checked to see that I wasn't dead, they just stopped my benefits."
In order to prove that she was, in fact, not dead, Ms Smith was then forced to travel to a local job centre to provide identification.
While it was obvious that the 65-year-old was able to prove that she had not passed away to get her benefits payments restarted, she was left without money for over a week.
She said: "It was absolutely awful, really hard. My condition means I need to have the heating on and the prices are going up all the time. I was left with no money."
Ms Smith has gone on to say that she wanted to raise the issue and share her experience, as she has still not been given an explanation for how the DWP believed she was dead.
She added that she doesn't want the same mistake to affect another vulnerable person, saying: "I really hope this doesn't happen to someone else. I am lucky because I have got family who support me but imagine if this happened to someone who was on their own and they were left without any support?"
"This government needs to go, they don't care about any of us."
In response, a spokesperson for the Department of Work and Pensions spokesperson said: "We would like to apologise unreservedly to Ms Smith for the distress and inconvenience caused by this mistake.
“All action to correct her claim has been taken, and all benefit arrears have been paid to her.”
