Universal Credit Review Or a Invasion of My Privacy

Yes as others have previously mentioned, they are looking for larger and more unusual payments in and out, but sometimes inspectors may pick up on smaller payments. A few years ago my friend's dad paid him £50 to help him out and this was picked up on. His dad had to write a letter saying it was a gift and all was ok.

You can receive gifts (money) even large amounts as long as they are not recurring set payments. If a relative of yours wanted to give you £2,000 to help you out that's ok, but what I would do is before receiving it inform the DWP explain the circumstances and ask if it's ok and they will undoubtedly say yes.

You can buy yourself reasonably priced car, but there's a grey area. If you had a million pounds in your bank account before claiming UC and went out and bought a top Ferrari for £994,000 leaving you £6,000 in your bank this will be seen as deprivation of capital!

There are lots of grey areas. Quite recently my mother passed away and I paid the funeral directors a deposit of £500 as I couldn't yet get any access any money from the estate. Under the circumstances I didn't have the time or strength to start asking the DWP, I simply assumed this was allowable.

Again quite recently, with my 22 year old car becoming unreliable and set for the scrap heap, I asked that DWP if rather than buying another cheap run about for myself if I could share my brother's car who's retired and rarely uses it and who lives nearby as a name driver and pay him half the cost of his car (c. £4,000) and then ongoing share the associated MOT bills etc. They messaged back saying we cannot advise you on what to spend your money on. I took this as an ok, so if at some point in the future they ask for my bank statements and question this payment, I can then refer them to my journal where I asked the question and point them to their response.

So in answer to the original questioner, on your statements if you can reasonably explain all your payments in and out then you'll be ok.

They are the Information Commissioner’s Office. They enforce data protection laws (GDPR) & protect individuals privacy. If the DWP didn’t provide anyone with their right to be informed (personal information charter) at the point of collecting bank statements etc it’s a breach of GDPR laws under the Transparency prong. Bank statements include personal & private information which is a privacy breach.

Hi All

Hope following may be helpful

Hi Sean, GDPR also contains
a carvery out to allow the
authorities to investigate
situations where they have
reason to believe there is
some form of wrong doing
There is then an offence
if tipping off, so if a bank
informed you that the
authorities were looking into
your affairs for tax or other
reasons, they would be guilty
of ripping you off and that is
a criminal offence.

Though it might cure my insomnia 😕

I only pay £4

Hi, they might ask about those transactions, but just be honest about them as you've told us on here, and they will not affect your UC.