Universal Credit: Overpayments

(asked on 27th June 2019) - View Source

Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, pursuant to the Answer of 5 June 2019 to Question 257458 on Universal Credit: Overpayments, how many overpayments were waived in (a) full and (b) part as a result of applications made by (i) claimants and (ii) their representatives in 2015-16.


Answered by
Alok Sharma Portrait
Alok Sharma
COP26 President (Cabinet Office)
This question was answered on 2nd July 2019

In 2015/16 there were less than 5 applications for the full waiving of a Universal Credit overpayment and less than 5 partial waiver applications for UC overpayments.

The Department has an obligation to ensure that public funds are administered responsibly and to abide by the principles set out in Her Majesty’s Treasury’s guidance on Managing Public Money (which can be found on gov.uk). Waivers are only granted in limited circumstances including where the recovery of an overpayment is causing substantial financial and/or medical hardship and clear supporting evidence of this is provided.

We are unable to provide a breakdown of how many applications were made by claimants or their representatives as this information is not stored.

*The figures provided in this response have been sourced from internal management information and were not intended for public release. They should therefore not be compared to any other figures subsequently released by the Department. We are not able to report exact figures that are lower than 5, therefore this has been listed as “less than 5”.

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