Think I’ve messed up!

Jacarandaboom

it’s a long one!!

I am appointee for my special needs son on Universal Credit. He has been claiming a few years now. Back in March he got a job and works 8 hours a week. It was only three weeks ago that realised I’d not told them. I just assumed that it would be done through the National Insurance number when employer reported it. I only realised my error when I was reading about someone else’s mistake. Anyway I’ve since gone onto the journal and reported this and admitted that had made a mistake and they sent the first request to report the months payment. That was the first mistake I made…but there’s another.
So in the meantime they have selected him for review and requested bank statements etc which I’ve uploaded last week. During uploading it said about savings and investments. Now I knew about £6000 limit and my son got a inheritance of £4000 a couple years ago which I put into savings which has steadily grown to £6000. I’ve not reported this as I thought you could have savings up to £6000 and I’ve made sure to keep it at that so that his benefits are not affected. This has all come from me not really understanding the system…as I honestly did not take much notice and he’s only ever had two job coach meetings. I very rarely ever looked at his UC account unless they sent a text which was generally for nothing.
so those are two bigs problems now, through no fault of my own and I feel like I’ve let my son down.
Yesterday he did not receive his Universal Credit payment, first time in three years, and I called them up and the agent said she could not see why there was no statement or why the payment has not arrived….???
I’ve done a bit more searching on the net and came across people saying that if you have £6000 savings then money in your current account is classed as savings so he would in effect be over the limit. I had no idea it worked like that. I just thought it was just £6000 savings. So he’s had up to £2000 in current account at times until he’s spent some money and then I recently started charging rent etc.
Anyway I got no where on the call to UC today and no response from the online journal.

I know I’ve messed up and I’ve put both the ‘mess ups’ on the journal explaining this.
I can really kick myself for not being more mindful…now he appears to have had UC stopped? No idea what will come next…I’m feeling really down about it all and very anxious to be honest.

Kimmy87

UC only stops if savings are over £16,000.

From 6000-16000 the payments are reduced.

OverlyAnxious

Hi,

The claim may have been briefly suspended while they work out the overpayments.

You will have to pay back a small amount, but it shouldn't be much if it was only ever hovering around the £6k mark. As above, they won't end a claim for this reason so it shouldn't be a big issue. Unfortunately UC don't respond over weekends so you will have to wait until next week for a response now.

Amaya_Ringo

I suspect it's as others have said, that they are looking into what might have been overpaid and they will be in touch. There's just so much going on at the moment that things are moving slowly.

Sidenote, the term "special needs" is not a very good term to use. It's fine to just use 'disabled', or name the disability if you so choose.

Jacarandaboom

thanks for your responses, I will await their response.
Amaya_Ringo, I use the term special needs as I work as a teacher in a special needs school and the school is named as such, but yes I agree using a different term for an individual person would be more appropriate.