"problems with carer's allowance overpayments were repeatedly ignored or covered up. At the heart of the scandal is the so-called cliff edge penalty, which punishes carers in part-time jobs by forcing them to pay back the entire benefit if they breach earnings limits by even tiny amounts. A carer who earned 50p more than the current 196 weekly threshold for 52 weeks would pay back not 26 but 4,258.80."
"The problem was exacerbated by the DWP's routine failure to check all monthly HMRC alerts flagging up potential earnings breaches, allowing carers to inadvertently accrue massive overpayments stretching back years. Until recently it was DWP policy to check just half of the earnings alerts it received. Carers often did not realise they had breached rules because earnings thresholds did not automatically rise in line with the national minimum wage, or because holiday pay and one-off performance bonuses were counted as"
The government is considering compensation payouts for unpaid carers who were hit with large benefit overpayments after inadvertently breaching strict carer's allowance rules. Ministers pledged to fix the problem after revelations that harsh penalties and DWP administrative failures plunged hundreds of thousands of carers into debt. More than 144,000 carers are repaying 251m in overpayments, typically around 5,000 and sometimes up to 20,000. The cliff-edge penalty forces full repayments for tiny earnings breaches, while failures to check HMRC alerts and thresholds not rising with the minimum wage allowed overpayments to accumulate over years.
Read at www.theguardian.com
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]