Nearly 15,000 people say they have wrongly been ordered to pay back Universal Credit payments. The report comes as the government attempts to retrieve the £500m it handed out in pandemic benefit payments
Among those asked to return the money are people who missed phone calls or messages from the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) carrying out retrospective checks, reports The Independent. In all 125,000 people have been told by the DWP they were not eligible for the payments.
They now owe thousands of pounds due to Covid putting a stopper on face-to-face identity checks at the beginning of the pandemic, reports BristolLive. If an individual 'does not provide evidence/fully engage in the process', they could be judged to be the recipient of an overpayment.
