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?

Without actually seeing the letter you cannot be sure of that at all, the OP may not even have seen the letter, so you have to go on what the OP said which, and I quote " my daughter is under investigation for fraud" She may be overreacting, but that isn't something you can assume- the fact you and multiple other posters agree that is what is happening doesn't change the fact that the OP states that this is a fraud investigation, no one on MN has seen the letters so you all agreeing it's a review not relevant- it may be it may not, without seeing the letters you and many other MN posters saying it's nothing to worry about may be completely wrong.

If she declared everything then she should be fine. I do often think it’s unreasonable that people are able to save whilst on UC though (if I’m understanding part of your thread correctly that she saved up her UC payments from the Christmas temp job ending until May), didn’t you think that was wrong? It should be to survive not save up. I think somewhere along the line something hasn’t been communicated correctly. I wouldn’t imagine she will get into much trouble, you’re usually just asked to pay it back. Tbh I’m not sure anyone on UC should be able to add to their savings anyway but if it’s legal then it’s legal. It doesn’t sit right with me personally.

It’s defo a review. OP doesn’t actually need to state that for is to be able to draw that information from what had been given.