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MR totally ignored by UC but an update at last!

anisty

So, UC closed my son's claim back in January this year due to too much capital.

I put in an MR to say capital had not exceeded 16k once £1850 deducted for COL payments.

This was confirmed received and logged to UC systems 12thFebruary.

Heard nothing at all til today. Letter attached to (closed) journal.

Overpaid by £687.84. No mention of civic penalty at all. My son actually owes about £2.5K.

They have not asked for more bank statements. I have told them (in the ignored MR that they need to correct the whole claim back to 2019)

They have taken 4 months to correct one month!! And it's wrong🙉

I just paid it in full though as i am so fed up with it lingering on and on.

Will i just get more payment demands now as they correct each month? They can only go back 4 months with the statements they have.

How will i know when they have finished collecting?

When they attach the civic penalty?

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Comments

Mary_Scope

Hi @anisty

It's likely send more payment demands as they reassess each month with the infomation they have. You should know they're finished when no new letters or demands appear and the journal shows no further action. A civil penalty may come later if they decide it's warranted and this is usually in writing☺️

OverlyAnxious

They really are useless at this!🙄

Honestly, I wouldn't have paid this instalment, I don't think that will reopen the claim so there's nothing to be gained from paying it. Please do let us know if they reopen it though, as there are a few on here in similar circumstances at the moment.

anisty

I don't really want the claim re opened as my son's capital is not much under the 16k. I just really wanted them to re open it so i would have the journal and the to do function open to submit statements and sort it out more easily. Opened but suspended payments would have been ideal.

I spoke to someone on Reddit (i know that's not highly regarded here but this person claims to work for DWP and all what she's (or he's!) told me so far has unfolded exactly as advised so i do believe this is a genuine DWP employee.

She thinks that will be it. The UCR team cannot request more statements on closed claims. She says my MR might come through to them but i could withdraw it if it does and that will be the end of the matter.

At the moment they only have 4 months' statements. They only clawed back the statement that exceeded 16k (it did exceed without COL applied)

The others were under 16k but above the declared capital amount of £12 951. So there was maybe £8.70 owed on the other statements but they have not corrected those at all. It does make me think they won't bother.

I think i had to pay it @OverlyAnxious - for one, i just want it done with. But for two, what if they call me for a compliance interview?

Remember the claim actually has been wrong for 6 years! I did make a genuine error but it would be easy for them to twist anything I say and accuse me of deliberate fraud. Really, my son owes somewhere between £2.5 - £2.8 K.

So, i do feel, if they do interview me at any point, the fact i told them that and paid prompty shows I am not trying to evade them at all.

Will keep you posted with any more contacts from them.

There is no info under "if you have been paid in multiple assessment periods" which they could have easily done for the 3 other statements and got the whole lot back in one.

I am hopeful this really might be it. But it is strange no reference at all to the civil penalty isn't it.

OverlyAnxious

Thank you for the info. This is all very interesting.

Another member in a similar position was told they had to pay £9k (out of a supposed £26k overpayment due to savings) but in the end the claim got reopened without paying anything at all. We're still waiting to see whether anything more happens there, though the suggestion from UC staff was that that was the end of it.

With my own claim, I paid off the overpayments on similar letters to yours, then a month later they sent half back to me, saying I didn't owe that much after all! I really don't have any faith in them getting the amounts correct.

The civic penalty is only £50, so I wouldn't worry about that one either way.

It is very strange that they can't request more than 4 months statements in a situation like this. That means it's not worth declaring savings above 16k…just wait until they do a review as they'll barely ask for any of the overpayment to be returned when they do eventually find out! (Not that I'm suggesting anyone does that of course, I have too much conscience to do anything like that myself).

I'm still waiting to hear back from ESA about the statements I sent them, over 7 years worth after the ESA claim was ended. So I am a bit surprised to hear that UC can't request any more.

anisty

As far as i understand it, DWP could ask for more bank statements if they passed my son's case over to the fraud team - that's a whole different kettle of fish and i'm not sure if they can refer it there unless they believe i have committed fraud. That's when i'd be interviewed under caution and they really would go to the nth degree to get the money back via the courts if i didn't pay up.

But my claim was caught up with the UCR agent review team which is not a criminal investigation team. I was misadvised by them to update capital on the journal. I didn't know about AP dates then. I really didn't have a clue what i was doing and just sort of looked over a few building society statements and thought "ok, about £13 500 there" and then just took the highest bank balance of £3k to try and give the highest possible balance, worst case scenario and arrived at a figure of £16.5K .I didn't know about COL payments.

I updated in the capital section that amount and it was a catastrophic error as it led very quickly to my local job centre closing the claim.

That meant the review could not go ahead. The revew team had to cancel my telephone appointment then as they cannot carry out reviews on closed claims.

The claim should have stayed open and then the review team could have got on with their work. They would have pulled in years' worth of statements and corrected the full claim.

The person on Reddit told me they'd screwed up telling me to update capital. They should never have done that.

She said they hadn't followed process at all so she could not be sure exactly what would happen but the UCR agent would correct my son's claim - she didn't know how many months would be corrected and it might be just the £50 penalty or the penalty plus X amount of months corrected.

anisty

*** usually when a review has started, requests to close a claim are denied so they can get bank statements etc so i don't think many people would be in my position of getting their claims closed mid-review ***

anisty

No further update on this except to say it's more than 6 months since my son's UC claim closed so his online journal has disappeared. I can still see past payments.

I have not heard anything else at all. They never did reply to my MR.

I guess that is the end of the matter.

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