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Why do I owe DWP money?

HeffieMonsterYT

So I got a letter yesterday evening saying the following:

The Department owes you benefit arrears of £####.## and we have taken this amount away from the money you owe us. We can do this without having to ask.

This means that the outstanding balance is now -£1050.26.

I have autism and on the enhanced rate of PIP and this letter is now stressing me out to the point I could not sleep at all.

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Comments

HeffieMonsterYT

chiarieds

Hi @HeffieMonsterYT - welcome to the community. I'm sorry this letter has caused you distress. We have had several members that have received such letters when the DWP owe money. They look to see if there may have been any monies overpaid to you, & they can go back through the years. The overpayments you have received, probably without realising yourself, seem often to be for housing benefit & tax credits. So they then deduct any overpayment they find from the money they are about to pay you. The balance they have written about as you have put above looks like the money they then owe you.

HeffieMonsterYT

Hi @chiarieds I am also a care leaver and on universal credits so I do not get tax credits and my housing costs have always been correct. I have never had any debts or anything and if I owed money I would always pay it straight away so this has just took me out of no where to be honest.

calcotti

HeffieMonsterYT said:

This means that the outstanding balance is now -£1050.26.

From memory, in other threads the minus sign in front of the figure means that this is an amount DWP still owe you after adjustments, as suggested by chiarieds.

calcotti

Duplicate thread here https://forum.scope.org.uk/discussion/82980/why-do-i-owe-dwp-money#latest

Cher_Alumni

@calcotti Thanks for pointing that out, I've merged the two threads together now. This will help us keep all your replies in one spot @HeffieMonsterYT

Has the advice given helped answer your questions? I understand how worrying it could be to receive that letter however it appears the DWP still owe you money which is reassuring

HeffieMonsterYT

yes thank you @Cher_Scope I'm now going to phone DWP on Monday to find out why they reduced the money that they did.

janer1967

You may find they are open this morning as they have been working at weekend to catch up