The Public Law Project found there were 686,756 cases of Universal Credit overpayments caused by DWP errors – as the law charity previously helped one claimant have over £8k in debts wiped
The Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) forced hundreds of thousands of benefit claimants to fork out for mistakes they made, new research has revealed. There were 686,756 cases of Universal Credit overpayment debts raised by the DWP identified as “official error” – meaning a department mistake – in 2023 and 2024, according to the Public Law Project (PLP).
DWP currently recovers these overpayments by reducing certain amounts from claimants’ future benefits. Recipients are informed of this and they are able to appeal it but the deductions usually begin regardless.
The PLP has helped several claimants win back thousands of pounds from the DWP in unfair overpayments cases. The legal charity and 30 other organisations are now calling on work and pensions secretary Liz Kendall to bring in new laws to end claimants having their benefits cut “unfairly”, reports the Independent.
The campaigners are pushing for Universal Credit to adopt the same approach as housing benefits to overpayments where they are not recovered when claimants could not reasonably have known they had been overpaid.
Shameem Ahmad, chief executive officer of PLP, said: “No one is expecting the DWP not to make mistakes. However, it is incumbent on the department to take responsibility for those mistakes, rather than pushing that burden onto people it should in fact be supporting.
“These official payment errors have real and highly detrimental consequences for people – causing sudden financial pressures and anxieties, through no fault of their own.
“This is the government’s chance to ensure it does not plunge hundreds of thousands of more people into debt, go some way in restoring public trust, and ultimately incentivise the DWP to not make errors in the first place.”
Back in 2023, the PLP helped a client have £8,623,20 in Universal Credit debt waived after winning a High Court battle with the DWP.
A DWP spokesperson told the Independent: “Overpayment by official error accounts for just 0.3% of our overall benefits spend, and we always work with people who have been overpaid to ensure repayments are affordable.
“We have an obligation to protect public funds and to ensure money lost to fraud and error is recovered, which is why we are bringing forward the biggest fraud crackdown in a generation, saving the taxpayer £1.5 billion over the next five years.”
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