University Credit Over payment

[pourmethevino]

Just need some advice about UC over payment and what I can expect to happen.

Firstly I have never claimed anything before so wasn’t sure how much I would receive, if anything. Started claiming last July due to being furloughed. We received a payment each month then my last payment I received my statement as £0 I couldn’t work this out so I left a note in my journal asking my work coach to explain. She told me they had made a mistake and would be in touch, to keep checking the journal. Monday morning I received a new statement with x amount. I have been waiting for this to go into my account but heard nothing so again I left a note in the journal.

This morning I received a reply stating that During the assessment periods “dates” I was overpaid and my x amount in new statement on Monday has been deducted from the over payment and this has now been referred to Debt Management. They will contact me in due course to arrange repayment terms for the outstanding money which totals to just under £500.

So do they take money each month for this or the whole of the UC for that month?

Can’t help feeling bloody annoyed though as this isn’t my fault, they have overpaid me and I didn’t realise.

Anyone?

Sorry no idea but call them and demand a better explanation

They should just take some each month until it has been repaid. It usually is a percentage (15-40%) of the standard allowance only.

Sorry, it's changed somewhat.

www.gov.uk/government/publications/benefit-overpayment-recovery-staff-guide/benefit-overpayment-recovery-guide#chapter-5--how-do-we-recover

5.19 See Appendix 2 for non-fraud overpayments where the claimant has earnings in excess of the Universal Credit disregard, this deduction is 5 times 5% of the appropriate Universal Credit standard allowance rate.

5.20 For fraud overpayments of Universal Credit recovery is 6 times 5% of the appropriate Universal Credit standard allowance.

5.21 In all other cases for Universal Credit, the deduction rate is 3 times 5% of the appropriate Universal Credit standard allowance.

Make sure you check that the overpayment is correct. Lots of poor administration and poor decision making with UC

Thanks for your replies and for the link.

I agree it's poor administration, how can they get it so wrong, apparently it's normal for them to over pay. It's ridiculous because these are the times when we need support and we are having to pay back money already.

I'll read the link and see which applies to us and try and work it out.

Any payment I get now I'm just going to ask them to double check it's the correct amount on my journal. This way I'm not landed with a debit 🙄