Received letter saying that I owe Universal Credit £19,000 - have never claimed

[Twitterwhooooo]

Posting here for traffic.

I received a letter on Friday saying that I owed UC £19,000 in overpayments and if I don't pay they'll contact my employer/send bailiffs round.

I've never claimed UC. During the period they state (May 2020 and May 2021) was I self-employed, so claimed the SEIS grants as my income dropped. These were declared on my self-assessment form, of course.

Called number today and explained. The letter/info held on me is my correct name, address, NI number, DOB, phone etc. The woman I spoke to say that 'she'd make a note' and it took some pressing to get her to escalate it to Fraud but she doesn't know what their time frames are etc. She sounded very unconcerned.

Called UC who gave me another number to call, which I'll do tomorrow, as I couldn't keep taking phone calls at work.

It's either identity theft or a massive mistake. What do I do to escalate this? Do I call the police?

TIA

Funnily enough, I've read articles on this. I've read concerns from charities about disabled people being left worse off. Estimated to be around almost a million people.

I wasn’t having a go just giving you my experience of checking UC & knowing those claiming it.
No you didn’t mention PIP but I assumed with benefit support of over £45,000 & disabilities they would be in receipt of it, which would rightly put their income up.
I can’t bring myself to apply for PIP as the anxiety of just having an ESA assessment hanging over my life is enough to deal with.
2 assessments would totally push me over the edge😭
Transitional protection only lasts for 6months or a year, I believe, & I’ll get just over £16,000, with one child, on UC not £19,000. I’ll assume those getting more are in a couple or have a 2nd child.
Seems a lot but when you have extra to pay out for gas & electric due to being home all day, have to run a car because you can’t leave house without the safety it gives you & can’t walk far, pay out for medicines & treatments yourself - saving the NHS money & also they apparently can’t do anything more for me I just have to ‘learn to live’ with my illness - monthly costs soon mount up 😔
What keeps us afloat right now is my daughters child maintenance. I put as much of her money into savings for her each month but without it we’d be homeless.

Just to add as my thumb freaked out & pressed post…

12 months legacy benefits for me is £17.688.48 & UC is £16,932.24.

I’ll be £756.24 worse off a year, once transitional payments end, which is about 2/3rds of the cost of running my necessary car for the year without repairs!

@TigerRag the info you are reading from charities refer to claimants that are not in managed migration. So yes if they move house out of area, split up with a partner etc and are forced to claim UC they would be worse if. Abs yes that will be a significant number of disabled people.
However like I said that doesn’t not apply to managed migration and TP.

@

@Grrrrdarling I didn’t think you were having a go. Yes they claim pip and dla but I didn’t include that in the £48 figure as that’s not equivalent to UC. They get disability benefits plus £48k tax credits.
BTW unless you have savings over £6 your TP will never end it just will erode out but only by a few pounds a year. And you income won’t go down it just won’t increase if for example you have TP and had another child your UC wouldn’t go up. Please don’t worry you will not be worse off only slightly if UC goes up with inflation each year.

"Close relative gets £48k annually it’s tax credits so will be higher when migrated over as the rent element won’t come from housing benefit anymore. Before anyone starts frothing she and her dc have significant disabilities and it includes childcare costs as her partner works."

Am I the only person to be shocked at this figure?
Happy to be told I am being unreasonable but I find this hard to fathom when this is effectively a 2 parent family with a SAHM

@Finallylostit no it’s not a two parent family with a SAHM it’s a family where one parent is so disabled they have carers coming in to help them out of bed , wash abs use the toilet , etc the other parent still manages to hold down a job whilst up multiple times in the night caring for his wife and dc.
m the children are in full time childcare so the other parent can work.
Still jealous or does that clear things up a bit for you?