Universal Credit overpayment

Just adding update here as well for anyone who wants to know the full story.

Uc completely ignored my MR.

I finally heard from them today via a letter attached to the closed journal.

An overpayment of £657.84. This is a fraction of what is actually owed and basically what they have done is just asked for one month's UC back.

I paid it right away as i just want the whole thing over and done with asap.

I expect more payment demands will follow and i will pay up to £2.5k which is what i believe is owed.

Any more than that, i will need to start appealing against.


There was no reference whatsoever to the civic penalty. Which makes me think this isn't the end of the matter.


They definitely got the MR as they phoned on 12.2.24 to confirm it was all logged on to the system.


They never bothered asking for more bank statements. Totally inept.

Hia Anisty. I've just read this whole thread. I do feel for your frustration over all this. Sounds like a total nightmare, and none of it your fault. You've done what you can, in good faith as well, please try not to worry about this, your mental health is important, especially as you're already looking after your son.

When you formed the legal welfare guardianship, IMO that's when you should have also undertaken a financial guardianship. I'm surprised your solicitor didn't advise you of this at the time. Not that I'm an expert!

Ali (((huggsss)))

Ah - well, the financial guardianship is very onorous and requires very comprehensive accounting to be kept which is inspected by the office of the public guardian so if it can be avoided, that's usually best. It is a lot of work.
Also financial guardianships don't qualify for legal aid and are expensive.

It was discussed at the time and felt that my having dwp status was working well so no need for any extra powers.
I already had a joint bank account and savings account with my son so i can access funds there.

The isa in his sole name was set up 10 years ago and i really had forgotton all about it. It just lies there and nothing (except interest) is added.

I had not been keeping tabs on it at all, hence i was surprised (and not in a good way!) to find it had gone up in value from what i declared to dwp.


I have heard nothing else so far but someone that claims to work for DWP on Reddit (and i do believe this person is genuine) has shed some light on what has happened here.

When the job centre closed my son's claim, the review could not take place as reviews can't be done on closed claims.

The review team have corrected the capital using the statements they have (only 4)

And they have sent that info off to the DM/CM.

Apparently they cannot now ask for more statements (as i am not under a fraud investigation; this was just a ucr agent review team)as the claim is closed.
My MR might eventually filter through but i can withdraw it if anyone contacts me and that should be the end of the matter.

I hope all this is true but will need to wait and see. I'm wondering if the reason they did not mention the civil penalty at all is because my response to the ucd68 civil penalty letter referred to the COL payments and my MR.

I think they might want to pretend that was never received as it's too much work for them to pull in all statements for 6 years.

It would be handy if they just sent out a final letter saying that's all debt cleared and the account closed off. I'm hopeful that's it as surely they would have corrected all 4 statements in one go.

But then again - maybe they were testing the waters to see if i paid that first demand before they send more demands.

Just need to wait and see!

That's right, David. I won't be under the fraud team so i am hopeful this is the end of the matter.

The thing is though, the statements they do have - they should realise they show capital over the declared £12951.

So - what they have done is demanded the return of the UC paid on 1st january.

They say capital on AP date 24th December was £17 300 (ish)

Ironically, it was only that high as the review team contacted me early December and i put a hold on all spends from my son's account til i knew what was going on!!! Big mistake.

Anyway - the other statements were under 16k but over the declared £12951. So there were various multiples of £4.35 owed on those other months which they have not asked for (yet)


And - surely once they saw ALL the submitted statements are over £12951 - that gives them reason to believe this has been going on longer than 4 months.(there is at least £4.35 owed every single month over the past 6 years!)

I thought they'd be right onto that which is why i told them in my written response to UC68 and also in my MR. I thought it was best to be upfront as soon as i realised it myself.

So - i suppose they do have sufficient reason to refer the case over to fraud but it probably isn't worth their while as the claim is closed.

I'm sure if we tried to open a new claim, it would be flagged for immediate review.

Annoying they never applied COL - as you might recall i did spent each COL payment on energy and I know you said that meant the disregard could not apply.

But i'm still not too sure on that as i have heard many times that, as long as total capital never dropped below £1850, then they do apply the disregard.

In this case though, they just didn't apply it. They never knew what it was spent on. They just plain and simple ignored it. And my correspondance telling them the disregard should be applied was definitely received and logged as a DWP employee called me to tell me he had logged it to the system that very day (12th feb)

Had they applied it and re opened the claim, calculated properly what was owed, i don't think there'd have been an overpayment as my son has missed £2.5k of UC since his claim closed.
And that is what i think he owes if they calculated back the 6 years.

So one cancels out the other.

Unless his disability payment gets stopped, he will never need to claim UC again though.

Thank goodness!

Just one more question on this - has anyone here ever paid an overpayment on a closed UC claim?

So 2 weeks have passed since i paid in full. So far, nothing has come through the post and no phone calls either. And nothing else written in the journal.

But of course i can't see that payment has been received or indeed know if they are going to ask for more money back.

I do think it's bad form that they attached the letter to the closed journal. Surely everything should come by post now. I cannot write in the journal but they can!

Most unfair!


So - my question is - how long do you think it will be before i can relax and know that's the end of the matter?


Is it normal for them to ask for some overpayment, and then wait a while before sending out for a bit more?

Has anyone else been left in this limbo land?


I don't want to phone them, for fear of opening a can of worms. And i doubt they will know what's going on anyway. I just want to know when i can put this all behind me for good.

Any ideas, anyone?