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Universal Credit: Overpayments

Question for Department for Work and Pensions

UIN 270289, tabled on 27 June 2019

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 on

2 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”.

Named day
Named day questions only occur in the House of Commons. The MP tabling the question specifies the date on which they should receive an answer. MPs may not table more than five named day questions on a single day.