MR totally ignored by UC but an update at last!

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.

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.