DWP sending letters ‘demanding £20k be repaid’ to some claimants | Personal Finance | Finance

The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) is hiring extra staff to investigate 100% of alerts relating to earnings breaches of those claiming carer’s allowance .

Last year, the Guardian revealed that the DWP was only investigating 50% of alerts, and this led to huge numbers of carers unknowingly accruing massive overpayments over many years, with some getting letters demanding £20,000. Hiring more staff means the DWP can then let carers know more swiftly if they are at risk of falling into debt.

Campaigners hope it means carers will be less likely to be hit by huge bills but there are also fears of huge backlogs as more alerts are processed.

Under current rules, unpaid carers who look after someone for more than 35 hours a week can claim the allowance as long as they earn less than £196 a week.

However, if carers are found to go over this limit by just a few pence, they need to pay back 100% of the benefit for that week, which is currently £81.90.

A review is also taking place to see how the issue with overpayments happened.

The chief executive of Carers UK, Helen Walker, said: “When the alerts target was set at 50%, thousands of carers were missed and experienced large and damaging overpayments, in a situation that could have been largely avoided.”

The Liberal Democrat leader, Ed Davey has called for the overpayments to be written off while a aDWP spokesperson said: “We are drafting in extra staff so the backlog of all under- and overpayments are investigated promptly and corrected. We will agree affordable repayment plans and, when issuing debt management notifications, signpost to independent advice services.”