Missed out on one year of child benefit

[ChirpyPeachTraybake]

I made a silly mistake and thought that the Child payment part of my universal credit was Child benefits payments. And the universal credit office confirmed this to me, or I thought they had. I didn't realise my mistake till my daughter was 1.5 years old. I have since applied and its been backdated by the 3 months, but it still leaves 1 year 2 months of payments I could have had which I worked out is around £1,400.

To give context, we could really have done with the payments as we were only just making ends meet and cancelled absolutely all payments, I didn't buy coffees out, I still don't spend any money on myself at all, no clothes, nothing. I even cancelled my own pension at work!

Has anyone ever made this mistake before, how did you get the payment backdated further than 3 months?

Thanks

My friend did same as you.
Unfortunately she didn't get anything other than 3 months.

They won't backdate this as it's not an error on their part. Just use the money moving forwards for things to be less of a stretch.

I don’t think you’ll get it backdated any further as it was your mistake and not theirs.

I'm really sorry OP, three months is the maximum they can backdate it.

Just enjoy the money going forward and maybe run your circumstances through a benefit checker just to make sure you're getting everything your entitled to now.

i think it’s 3 months if it’s the initial registration but for info I backdated for 2 years on the app but my kids were older and already registered and had it previous years. I’d cancelled it because I thought was going to go over the threshold of the time but didn’t.

It's annoying but your mistake not theirs. I'm still salty about missing out on the £500 new baby payment that the labour government used to do because I found out about it a week after the deadline to apply 😭 I could really have done with that. I think the health visitor never mentioned it to me because I had a good job and a nice (rented) flat and a husband but he was financially abusive and we were entitled to it. Frustrating but my own fault.

You can only backdate for 3 months if that's your initial claim. You can claim up to 2 tax years worth if you had an existing claim but opted out of payment and would have been due the money in those years.

Unfortunately like most things in life you have to be financially savvy and read up as much as you can possibly do, if you want certain things to happen, OP you won’t be the only one not knowing the 3 month rule, so at least someone reading this, it may help them to get sorted.

Just had a thought OP...

It's a bit of a long shot. But if you can prove that you were misadvised by the DWP, you could make a complaint and request an "ex gratia" payment from them by way of compensation.

If you have the energy for it...you could try putting in a complaint, giving as much detail about the date/time/content of the advice as possible. (If it happened over the phone the DWP might still have the recording).

Escalate to your MP or a benefits advisor if you don't get a response.

It’s your mistake unfortunately.

Where you said you thought they had comfirmed did you misread ? If it does ssy that then screen shot it. And appeal.

Please try and restart paying into your pension. I know it feels hard now but you will be so happy you did.

You won’t get cb backdated by more than three months, best you can do is check whether you have full ni contribution for your pension history. You might depending how your ml fell,

They won't backdate it any more than they have, however I'd be more concerned about the missing NI contributions

Thank you all for your advice! I really appreciate every comment x

You're so right. I really would love to but I work for the NHS (who give a good pension) and i took a break from it while on one year mat leave. I didn't realise though that when you return you have to pay the missed year on top of continuing pension so it's a huge increase. And since I reduced my hours too it just didn't feel doable 🙈 I am really worried about it but I feel trapped because I can't afford to pay the missed year + now.

It’s worth contacting your payroll dept and asking if you definitely need to make up the missed contributions. I work for a similar public sector payroll (think fire service, police etc) and whilst we would set the pension repayments back up automatically whilst you were still in the scheme, there is an option not to do this - you just have to sign a pension waiver which confirms you know you are sacrificing your contributions for the year you had off. Worth a go!

I will do, thank you for saying that!