Universal Credit: Overpayments

(asked on 2nd March 2018) - View Source

Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many universal credit claimants are re-paying benefit overpayments; what the (a) mean and (b) median value is of those overpayments; and what the average period is for those benefit payments to be recovered in the most recent period for which figures are available.


Answered by
Alok Sharma Portrait
Alok Sharma
COP26 President (Cabinet Office)
This question was answered on 7th March 2018

The Department has a duty to protect public funds and has an obligation to ensure that in accordance with social security legislation, any overpayment of benefit resulting from a claimants error or fraud is recovered.

There were 40,521 Universal Credit claimants who had a deduction from their Universal Credit as a recovery against a benefit overpayment (which related to their legacy benefits) within the last 31 days (in January 2018 the Universal Credit caseload was 730,000).

The mean value of the outstanding balances is £1,082.50 and the median figure is £332.55.

The information to provide the average recovery period will often fluctuate over time dependent on a claimant’s particular circumstances.

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