DWP demands 134,000 people pay up to £20,000 after allowance failures

The Department for Work and Pensions is clawing back an eye-watering and staggering £251 MILLION. The DWP is demanding £250m from unpaid carers in a crackdown over overpayments, with more than 134,000 targeted by the move.

134,000 unpaid carers are repaying these huge penalties, in some cases as high as £20,000, as a result of the DWP’s failures. Stephen Timms, the chair of the Commons work and pensions committee, on Saturday told the Guardian: “That’s a strikingly large sum of money that DWP should never have paid out in the first place.

“These overpayments are causing a lot of distress for carers but there is also a financial propriety issue here. It’s a very good reason for the National Audit Office (NAO) to have another look at carer’s allowance overpayments.” The cross-party Commons work and pensions committee last week wrote to the NAO urging it to investigate the DWP “given the scale of the problem".

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It demanded action due to the "lack of progress made since 2019 and the cost to the taxpayer of a system that fails to prevent or rectify overpayments”. Emily Holzhausen, the director of policy and public affairs at Carers UK, said: “The impact on carers is appalling, with carers’ mental health taking a real knock and some saying that they’ve got to rock bottom,."

She added: “To some this might feel like just a number. To us, that is hundreds of thousands of carers’ lives being negatively affected.” A DWP spokesperson said: “The total amount of carer’s allowance overpayments includes historical debts which the department is seeking to recover. In comparison, carer’s allowance expenditure is forecast to be £4.2bn this year alone.

“We are also progressing an enhanced notification strategy as part of our ongoing commitment to customer engagement, which will help ensure customers fulfil their obligations to inform DWP when changes in their circumstances have occurred, building on existing communications.”