My daughter is under investigation for fraud with universal credit. Can anyone help?

[Est1974]

My daughter went to uni last year, realised it wasn’t the right course and dropped out by the end of October to reapply for this year. I’d paid into a child trust fund her whole life that she closed to pay her living expenses to top up the loan - about 7.5k in total. She signed on when she got back and started looking for work. She declared the money appropriately and her uc was trimmed in line with it being over 6k. She got a couple of uc payments. She then got a Christmas shop job that lasted 6 weeks. Uc stopped during this period. I charged a little bit for food but she saved the rest and declared it properly each month. She applied for hundreds of jobs but didn’t get one until the May. She lived like a hermit, saved the uc and declared it every month as her savings went up. The May to September job paid really well and she saved almost all of it. She got no uc during either of the periods of paid employment. She was awarded two scholarships for women in engineering for her new university course. She is now in the new uni with a little war chest of nearly 18k.

Universal Credit are now gunning for her and want 12 months worth of bank statements and are accusing her of fraud. She got no money while she was working and at the time she got the second job she’d only amassed about 8k - well under the 16k limit which she declared properly at every stage and the uc she received between January and may went down accordingly as she saved it. The jump from 8-14 was during her summer job during which she wasn’t claiming and the other 4k is from the women in engineering scholarships. She wasn’t claiming while she got these earnings.

Shes on her own at uni in her first week, full of freshers flu and petrified. What will happen?

No, most of the time it is not necessary to get (paid) legal advice and if that is your recommendation to an 18(?) year old, you are setting her up to a lifetime of dependence.

Just give the bank statements and if she hasn’t lied then she will be fine. She should not have been paid any money at all when she got her trust fund if she notified them correctly as it stops payments completely.

Well you must have the cheapest lawyer in history then as to just do a 1hr phone call our bog standard (pretty useless tbh) local law firm charges 3x that much. Price goes up if they leave the premises too!

Would CAB be able to help? @Est1974

https://www.citizensadvice.org.uk/benefits/universal-credit/claiming/contact-us-about-universal-credit/

Yes, sounds like they really need to reword their letters! Fuckwits.

Yeah defs shop around. I use 3 for diff purposes and the only one which is that expensive is the one I use for my business!

Dependence?! For seeking legal advice?!
you’d think I’d said tell her to go on tinder and find a benefits specialist lawyer and marry him so she’s ok for the rest of her life 😂😂

She doesn’t need the CAB she needs to give them the bank statements she has been asked for. It’s really that simple.

Nail on the head. It IS that simple. She's legally required to provide the bank statements, and literally nothing she does, no advice she pays for, etc., will change that. DWP will just continue wanting her to send her bank statements. HMRC do the same - they know they have the law on their side, and as long as they comply with the legislation, i.e. correct wording of request letter, correct wording of statute/legislation, request sent within the legally provided time scales, the ONLY response is to send the bank statements. Simples.

It is not a fraud investigation!
The only problem i can see iswith any student maintenance loan received to cover the period after she withdrew ie November and December

Fair enough. I was just thinking if she wanted to speak to someone to reassure her if she's in a flap, other than her mum. Sometimes they take advice better coming from someone else.

I work for the DWP. Even if she has made a mistake they wouldn't look at it as fraud, just an error resulting in an overpayment. The worst that would happen is she would be asked to repay any overpayments in instalments and a £50 civil penalty. Tell her not to worry. They're just double checking.

It is complicated by change of student status, loans, trust fund , different jobs and the fact she has saved an amount of money that takes her over the eligibility threshold. I can see why they are looking into it. UC is a benefit to help people who are struggling to meet their living costs. She has managed to save 18k so it will look unusual. If she has done everything she has meant to do, she'll be fine. If not, she'll just have to pay that amount back.

To add to this, if she doesn't provide the statements they will make a default decision and decide she never had any entitlement and make her repay everything.

She needs to just send the statements in. She's not being accused of anything nor has she been invited in for an interview to explain anything. Unpopular opinion but if she has those sort of savings she didn't need to claim at all so all this could have been avoided.........

Just send the statements. If she made a mistake and was overpaid they'll make her pay it back but that doesn't mean they're accusing her of fraud.

For seeking paid legal advice for a minor financial administrative task, yes.

Could the ‘fraud’ element be that she wasn’t using it for its designed purpose? The point of UC is to help with living costs. She didn’t need help with living costs as she didn’t have any. She was simply saving it which isn’t what it’s designed for? I don’t know the rules though, and it sounds like she followed all the rules.

If she does need extra support Citizens advice are brilliant with this sort of thing. The only problem is they are very stretched so it can take a while to get help. It might be worth doing it in parallel with sending in what they have asked for, then the help is available if she needs it.

I would do a chronology setting out dates of everything with bank statements and any documents confirming scholarships. It will be fine.

The student loans will be counted as income even those for tuition. I think this is what has flagged up the investigation as they are paid in stages throughout the year.

They once phoned me & made an appointment to come & see me.. I was worried & phoned them to see what it was about.
It turned out they'd got my late husband's pension down under two different company names, so it appeared that I was getting twice as much as I'd let them know! Mistakes happen.

Yes and I suppose if she had concerns about mh and she paid for a therapist, or struggles with education and paid for a tutor, that would be dependence too?
give over and stop derailing ops thread attacking me

You can choose spend it or,save it however you like

Another vote for citizens advice - get her to find and print off all the call logs and emails of all that has been declared and when. Print off the years statement. Get all the evidence you have in a binder and ask citizens advice bureau for help/advice.