Universal Credit - help

[Mogs43]

I’ve posted in Legal Matters already but am desperate and thought , on reflection, I should probably have posted here.

My employers (public sector) have overpaid me for the last three months. Sounds great but in practice it’s not. My universal credit payment has been reduced and am no longer entitled to other support such as council tax support. My employers recognise that I have been overpaid and say they will write to me setting out how much I have been overpaid by and how it is to be repaid. Have been chasing correspondence for three months but still nothing.

I didn’t receive any payment at all the beginning of this month from my employers and tonight , when checking what my universal credit payment will be it has been reduced. My employers claim I was paid at the beginning of the month and DWP have reduced the payment accordingly. I am left with around £1k for the month. This won’t even cover my rent (London). As this has been going on for months I have no savings or credit options available. I am broken.

I assume that my employers were going to pay me at the beginning of the month but recognised the previous errors and stopped the payment. However they must have informed HMRC or DwP of a payment and this has impacted upon my Universal Credit. At the beginning of the month I tried to raise a grievance (explained the impact this was having on my mental health) but they rejected the grievance saying I needed to allow time for the issues to be resolved informally. It has been over 4 months now- every month I have got into more financial difficulty. It has left me feeling broken - I have been to my Gp, the CAB and called the Samaritans but how can you be expected to want to carry on when you can’t even pay basics like your rent? I just feel defeated and have no energy left for this. Has anyone been in a similar situation and if so what did you do? Thank you.

Please can someone help? Thank you

It’s so worrying but this will be sorted and you must keep going - I appreciate it’s awful to be in the midst of this.
Do you have HR? I’m also in a Union but payroll are a law into themselves. I hope you can persuade UC to put your payments right and for work to compensate you.
Can you seek advice from anyone like Citizens Advice etc? It would be good to write down your current position against your expected position. If they’ve reclaimed all your wages then that is bound to have caused you harm. I think this should’ve been planned with you.

Thank you for your reply- I am very grateful. I don’t think it’s an attempt to reclaim the overpayment - rather that they were going to overpay me again so have just stopped everything. They have told HMRC that I was paid so all other support has stopped (it looks on paper like I’ve been well paid but I’ve got nothing). Just a real worry - as it’s the fourth consecutive month that I haven’t been paid properly I just don’t have any reserves to fall back on and will now not even be able to pay the basics. I have asked them to put everything in writing but they’ve done nothing so far (will keep chasing).

I just feel exhausted and broken by it all (not sleeping isn’t helping). I don’t know at what point you just give up. It seems relentless- constant chasing, constant problems, nothing right. Suppose you just have to keep going until something turns up.