A mum who was incorrectly told that she owed the government more than £11,000 says the stress of being chased for the money left her in A&E.
Georgie D'elia received notice from the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) earlier this year that she owed the enormous sum.
The 59-year-old mum-of-one was told it was because she had wrongly received the amount in Universal Credit , even though she has written confirmation from the same department that she was entitled to the benefit.
Georgie had been renting a property in the town during the Covid pandemic and was claiming Universal Credit, including support with her rent payments, reports Surrey Live.
That benefit was stopped at the end of lockdown in 2021 but she appealed the case and was informed by the DWP last October that they had revised their decision and that she was indeed entitled to the benefit.
She then thought no more of it until this summer, when she tried to contact the department about the separate issue of receiving the cost of living payment that was introduced in response to rising energy prices.
It was at that point she was informed that she owed £11,628 for Universal Credit payments that she should not have received. Georgie explained that the decision to end her benefits had been overturned after her appeal, and that she had written evidence of this - but she was repeatedly told her debt could not be written off as the outcome of the appeal had not yet been recorded on the relevant database.
She has been trying to resolve the issue ever since, saing "It's been really stressful.
"On several occasions, while I was going through the appeal, my blood pressure went right up and I got sent to A&E twice because it was at the really dangerous end.
"I've had to go to the food bank because of my health as I haven't been able to work, and now I've got DWP chasing me for a debt I don't owe. It's really affected me."
Despite being promised by a DWP employee on the phone several weeks ago that the issue would be pursued, the debt had still not been written off. At the start of September she physically took the documents proving the appeal decision to the job centre at Redhill and asked the staff there to send them to DWP, which they did. She still has not been notified of any change to the status of the debt.
A Department of Work and Pensions spokesperson said in response: "We have reduced this customer’s debt significantly following the decision from her appeal; we apologise for the delay in processing this and for any distress caused."
Despite this assurance, Georgie said on Wednesday (September 28) that she had still not heard from the department with any information to that effect. In any case, she believes that the debt should not have been "reduced" but rather written off entirely.
