Social Security Benefits: Overpayments
(asked on 26th January 2023) - View Source
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many instances of benefit overpayment that were not attributable to a fault made by the claimant were (a) requested to be waived by claimants and (b) waived by his Department in each year since 2018.
The Department for Work and Pensions only started to categorise waiver requests in 2020/21. Information from 2020/21 onwards can be found in the table below.
| Waivers requested relating to Official Error | O/E Waived |
20/21 | 12 | 3 |
21/22 | 97 | 5 |
22/23 (to date) | 104 | 25 |
Section 105 of The Welfare Reform Act 2012 states that any overpayment of Universal Credit, new style JSA or ESA, in excess of entitlement, is recoverable. The department therefore seeks to recover benefit overpayments accordingly, but remains committed to doing so without causing undue financial hardship.
Any claimants struggling with the proposed rate of deductions are encouraged to contact DWP Debt Management to discuss a temporary reduction in their rate of repayment.