DWP warning as tens of thousands of carers must pay money back

The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has issued a warning as tens of thousands of carers face millions in payouts. Unpaid carers must pay more than £250m after unknowingly paying their allowance.

The government is now trying to recover money from more than 130,000 carers. A 2019 report warned this could happen, saying carers could be “heavily penalized for honest mistakes” as it claimed errors were not caught quickly enough by the DWP.

Unpaid carers who look after someone for more than 35 hours a week are entitled to Carer’s Allowance from the DWP. However, they are only eligible if they earn less than £151 a week after tax. If this is exceeded – such as through overtime or salary increases – they are no longer eligible and must repay any allowance received in full, the Express reports.

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On Thursday, the Work and Pensions Committee warned that “no progress has been made” in limiting the impact of issues raised five years ago and called on the DWP to “urgently improve” how it monitors and communicates overpayments. Sir Stephen Timms, chairman of the commission, said the government had “known for years” about the problems but “just allowed many unpaid carers to unwittingly accumulate unmanageable levels of debt”.

“The DWP must now move without delay to understand the issue and ensure that carers are no longer subjected to the distress that such overpayments can cause,” he said. The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has come under scrutiny after figures released following a parliamentary question by Labor MP Timms revealed twice as many women are in debt due to overpayments, which is in line with the proportion receiving the allowance for the caretaker.

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The DWP argued that “claimants have a responsibility to inform the DWP of any change in their circumstances that could affect their award and it is only right that we recover taxpayers’ money when this has not happened”. However, the carers contested that they did not know they had exceeded the earnings limit until they were hit with repayment claims years later.

Karina Moon, who looks after her daughter Amber, who needs constant attention, finds herself £11,000 in debt after scraping just above the earnings threshold through her part-time supermarket job. She paid at a rate of £60 a month for four years and faces a further 11 years of payments.

“They’re taking money out of our income,” she expressed, noting the impact on essentials like driving a car, paying bills and buying groceries. Gina Price, who looked after her father while working part-time at a petrol station in Carmarthenshire, south-west Wales, now faces a DWP debt of around £7,000, describing the financial blow as a ” huge blow”.

Sir Ed Davey, the leader of the Liberal Democrats and a carer himself, called for these debts to be written off. In response to the issue, the DWP said it was “progressing an enhanced notification strategy” to better inform carers of potential overpayments.

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