Stuck in a loop!

I would welcome any advice with my dilemma. In May I won on appeal at tribunal for ESA Support. I waited 7 months for this, not a long time in comparison to others I know. At the same time I sent DWP an update on the very small increases on the 3 Civil Service pensions I am paid owing to ill health retirement. They are really small sums, 2 of them under a thousand pounds a year. Some days later i got a letter telling me I had been overpaid and to call to arrange to repay this sum. I rang and queried it as I had sent all the correct figures to DWp in November when the pensions came into payment. A very rude woman told me it didnt matter what I'd sent I had to repay asap. She said I was lucky not to be in the Civil Service any more!! Very lucky to have a congenital degenerative disease affecting my arms, legs, hands and vision - not! The next day I got a letter telling me backdated money wa sbeing paid to me. Again, I rang and queried. I was told that the overpayment had been written off to offical error, I owed them nothing but they owed me about 450.00 I asked again if I owed them anything, reply definitely not. Now today I got 2 letters, i1 saying I have an overpayment and second asking for details of my income for purposes of IB. I dont get IB! There is no contact name or number on this letter, it looks like a really bad old photocopy and its from Glasgow. Any advice please?

If you give them all relevant information promptly, then if they make an overpayment, they have no automatic right to recover it, but can ask for it.

Your best bet at this stage is to get onto your MP. The DWP has people who deal specifically with MPs and it seems to help sorting this sort of thing out going via an MP.

lulusmf
Smith wrote:

I would welcome any advice with my dilemma. In May I won on appeal at tribunal for ESA Support. I waited 7 months for this, not a long time in comparison to others I know. At the same time I sent DWP an update on the very small increases on the 3 Civil Service pensions I am paid owing to ill health retirement. They are really small sums, 2 of them under a thousand pounds a year. Some days later i got a letter telling me I had been overpaid and to call to arrange to repay this sum. I rang and queried it as I had sent all the correct figures to DWp in November when the pensions came into payment. A very rude woman told me it didnt matter what I'd sent I had to repay asap. She said I was lucky not to be in the Civil Service any more!! Very lucky to have a congenital degenerative disease affecting my arms, legs, hands and vision - not! The next day I got a letter telling me backdated money wa sbeing paid to me. Again, I rang and queried. I was told that the overpayment had been written off to offical error, I owed them nothing but they owed me about 450.00 I asked again if I owed them anything, reply definitely not. Now today I got 2 letters, i1 saying I have an overpayment and second asking for details of my income for purposes of IB. I dont get IB! There is no contact name or number on this letter, it looks like a really bad old photocopy and its from Glasgow. Any advice please?

There is now a special telephone number you can call to talk about over payments 0845 850 0293

Debt Management has five contact centres staffed with advisors who are able to take your call and offer advice; and your call may be routed to any one of our Contact Centres in Bradford, Corby, Dearne Valley, Nuneaton or Trafford to achieve this.


They can access all dwp records and are better placed to sort
outproblemsastheyunderstnddealwiththeseproblemsallthetime

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Sadly it was the Debt Management team member who was so rude and made the 'lucky' remark. The amount they are asking for is lower than the original figure but they want it repaid in 26 weekly amounts. This is quite a loss from the ESA payment.

It's interesting that they make demands for overpayments in writing but only inform you that it's in error over the phone!

I hope you have kept copies of all correspondence and noted dates of telephone calls in case it has to go to a tribunal. If the DWP haven't a clue whether you owe them, or they owe you money, how on earth can a claimant be reasonably expected to know their position?

Good luck with getting it cleared up lulusmf.

Derek

Thanks so much. Yes, I keep a note of the date, time of call and the name of the person I speak to. The rude lady of Debt Management gave her first name but insisted they no longer have to give a surname. So it can be tricky when u are dealing with call centres and they have more than 1 person of that name!