At least £357m in carer’s allowance benefit was paid out in error over the last six years.
Official failures are being blamed. The result of these failures has been debt and misery inflicted on thousands of people caught in minor breaches of the earnings rules that the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) failed to check, The Guardian reported.
National Audit Office numbers
According to the National Audit Office (NAO), the number of people with outstanding Carers Allowance overpayment debts increased from 80,169 in 2018-19 to 136,730 in 2023-24, marking a 71% rise.
In the first half of the 2024-25 financial year, DWP identified over 15,000 overpayments, with 50 cases exceeding £10,000.
Regional breakdowns, such as for the West Midlands, are not specified in the available data.
New technology
Emily Holzhausen, director of policy and public affairs at Carers UK, said: “Given that unpaid carers were falsely assured that the problem would be largely resolved in 2019, they deserve better, and we have asked the government to strike off debts where they could have told carers sooner.”
DWP had promised new technology that would have eradicated carer’s allowance overpayments.
Carer Guy Shahar, whose family is being pursued for a £10,000 overpayments, said: “The DWP’s negligence and failure to follow even its own low standards have led to this ridiculous situation that they promised to have sorted out years ago.”
VEP tool
The verify earnings and pensions tool (VEP) was introduced in 2018. As a matter of policy DWP decided to only investigate half of VEP alerts.
According to the NAO, In the five years since VEP was introduced as the solution to the overpayment problem, more than 262,000 overpayments totalling more than £325 million have been clawed back from carers with 600 carers prosecuted.
Last month ministers announced an investment of £800,000 to adequately staff the investigation of all VEP alerts.
