UC Risk review team

life

Just going to put this here for anyone wondering what it is or what's going to happen if they contact you.

(Was looking for more information on who they are but not got much luck).

This what happened to me so far.

I sent new tenancy agreement in my UC journal as my rent went up by £100. Next day I got sent this in my journal, 

Hello . This is the UC Risk Review Team. We need to conduct a review of the information on your Universal Credit claim. We will need to speak to you . You should not ignore this message. We will contact you by phone today Thursday 08/12/2022 at 13.00 pm The call may appear on your phone as a withheld or 0800 number. I will aim to call you at the time stated but please note the call may be made to you within a two hour time period between 13:00 pm and 15:00pm Please ensure your contact details are up to date on your account. If we are unable to speak to you, your claim will be suspended, your claim being closed and any overpayment being recovered from you. On this call we may ask you to provide additional evidence to confirm your entitlement to Universal Credit. You may need to provide any further documentation according to your circumstances. We will explain what documents you will need to provide on the call. If you are working at the time the call is scheduled for, please tell us via your Journal when we can call you

life

Then after the call this was written in my journal

Attended:

E-BIO Interview by phone

Thursday 8 December 2022 at 1:00pm by phone

life

Followed by this,

This is UC Risk Review Team contacting you about your claim to Universal Credit . Following our telephone conversation today 08/12/2022 please upload the following documents for verification

1) Tenancy Agreement with details of the rent and signatures of yourself and landlord ( please note that we do not accept unsigned tenancy Agreements as they are not legally binding )

2) An official letter from either your GP or NHS with your name and address on it.

You must upload the documents within 14 days. A to-do link has been created for you in your UC account to upload the required documents

Thank you

life

I'll be uploading these documents tomorrow but I find this weird. Especially the part where they say they'll suspend, claim being closed or I'll have to pay back any overpayment. 

I'm glad I didn't miss the call because it sounds like they would have closed my UC account.

All they really asked on the call was information on me name, date of birth, address etc. 

life

The information I've gathered on the UC Risk review team is that they work in the fraud department. 

Anyway any information always welcome other than that I'll just see what happens next

Thanks 

bg844

During the Covid pandemic UC relaxed the rules on claiming and unfortunately many millions of pounds got claimed fraudulently. As part or plans made last year, the UC risk review team recruited further staff to check claims, as long as everything you have said is correct you really have nothing to worry about. 

I hope you get cleared soon.

calcotti

The 'risk' in the heading is risk to the public purse from incorrect claims rather than risk to the claimant.

life

@bg844 and @calcotti thanks for the info. I was transferred over from ESA so I just assumed they knew all my information already. But that's understandable thanks again 👍

poppy123456

They wouldn't have known anything about your rent because ESA didn't include money for this.

potnoodle

Hey life - this actually happened to me recently too. My rent was put up and they needed all these proofs - some of which were stressful to obtain. It seems to all have been accepted now, so I'm hoping there won't be any further stress.

life

Update

Message to my UC journal yesterday

This is UC Risk Review Team

 contacting you about your claim to

 Universal Credit.  

Thank you for uploading your housing

evidence. Please be aware a full

 review can take a little while.
 We will contact you again if we 
require  further  evidence. 
We apologise if this causes you

 any concern. If you have any

 questions about this, please

 leave a message in your journal and

 we will get back to you 
Regards

life

Update

Message to my UC journal today

Thank you for your time,
 the review is now complete
and your claim will continue as 

normal 

Regards

life

All sorted now I guess

calcotti

Thanks for the update. This may provide some reassurance to anybody else who gets contacted by the Risk Review team and comes across this thread.

life

Hopefully helps @calcotti 👍

SueHeath

That's great news @life x

life

Thanks @SueHeath 👌

L_Volunteer

Please don't hesitate to let us know if there's anything else we can do to support you @life. We are all here for you and listening to you 

OverlyAnxious

life said:

I'm glad I didn't miss the call because it sounds like they would have closed my UC account.

Good to see you've got it sorted now, seems like more hassle than it should be!  

Reading experiences like this are a major concern for me though.  I can't use phones, and was under the impression that everything to do with UC could be done online (unlike ESA).  I keep reading about phone calls or face to face interviews being necessary for UC, with immediate consequences for missing them.  I'm still on ESA but really not looking forward to the migration when I'm forced to!

life

Thanks @L_Volunteer

To be fair @OverlyAnxious that was the first phonecall I've had from UC ( I did call them a couple of times) since I moved over from ESA. I moved march last year.

I probably shouldn't have stressed over it but you just never know especially when they say if you don't answer the UC could be stopped. 

Just had to upload documents but I've heard on another thread that they didn't upload documents ( bank statement) and there UC stopped so never too careful. And thanks I'm glad I got it sorted too 👍

life

The post I saw https://forum.scope.org.uk/discussion/99594/universal-credit#latest