Department for Work and Pensions

4. Mr A, represented by his wife, Ms B, complains about the actions of DWP in relation to his UC claim. He tells us DWP:

• incorrectly said he had received an advance of £630 in January 2022 and made deductions from his UC to recover it

• took too long, and did not fully implement, a tribunal decision finding that DWP should put right the above and increase his housing award from April 2022.

5. Mr A tells us that these events caused him to fall into debt unnecessarily, and impacted him financially. He tells us he was in constant fear of being evicted. This had a significant impact on his pre-existing mental health condition. Mr A continues to worry about DWP’s ongoing handling of his claim, and he can no longer trust it to do the right thing.

6. Mr A seeks a financial remedy from DWP to recognise the ongoing impact its actions had on him. He also seeks an apology and a full explanation for why and how the events happened.

7. UC is a state benefit designed to help people who are out of work, unable to work or on a low income with their living costs. Mr A claims UC because he is unable to work.

8. In January 2022, DWP wrongly said Mr A had received an advance of £630. This advance was a hardship payment DWP can make which is deducted from future benefits payments. It took deductions of £81.21 per month from his benefits in March, April and May 2022.

9. In the meantime, Mr A appealed DWP’s calculation of his housing costs, and a tribunal heard his appeal in April 2022. The tribunal decided DWP had incorrectly calculated his housing costs. It found his landlord should have been receiving £33.33 per month more towards his housing costs than it had awarded. It also found Mr A had not received the £630 advance and DWP had added this in error. It said DWP should remove this from Mr A’s account.

10. DWP took time to carry out its calculations following this decision. In July 2022, it paid Mr A £243.63 to reimburse the money it had wrongfully deducted. In August 2023, it finalised its revised calculations and reimbursed Mr A’s landlord the outstanding money it owed in housing costs. It also corrected Mr A’s records to show he had never received an advance in the sum of £630 and therefore did not owe DWP that money.

11. Mr A complained, and DWP recognised its errors. It provided financial remedies to him during its complaints process totalling £150. He was not satisfied with its responses and escalated his concerns to the Independent Case Examiner (ICE). ICE upheld his complaint and recommended DWP pay Mr A an additional £200 to recognise the impact of its mistakes.

16. Mr A remains highly frustrated about DWP’s actions, and then that it took so long to implement the tribunal’s decision.

17. DWP did not initially recognise its error in incorrectly saying Mr A had received a £630 advance. It accepted this after the tribunal ruled in his favour. DWP has acknowledged it erroneously added this when it was completing calculations relating to another aspect of Mr A’s claim.

18. DWP acknowledged this was poor service. We agree the initial mistake and making deductions between March and May 2022 are indications of maladministration. This is contrary to the commitment in its Charter to ‘getting it right’.

19. After the tribunal in April 2022, DWP did not fully implement its decision until August 2023. We understand from the ICE report, and our subsequent discussions with DWP, that it was reluctant to implement new calculations whilst another appeal of a later benefits decision was ongoing.

20. DWP’s staff guidance in its ‘Advice for decision makers: staff guide’ says:

‘ The [tribunal’s] decision on the issues it has dealt with is final unless

21. there are grounds to supersede the decision (see ADM Chapter A4) or 2. the [Decision Maker (DM)] considers it is erroneous in law and applies for permission to appeal’

22. Furthermore, its appeal guidance sets out:

‘The DM can suspend payment of benefit awarded by the [tribunal] whilst an appeal to the [Upper Tribunal] is considered

1. The suspension can be imposed whilst awaiting for or on receipt of, the [tribunal’s] decision notice. The DM must, as soon as reasonably practicable, inform the appellant in writing that they intend to request a statement of reasons

2. If the DM does not apply for the statement of reasons within one month of the date the FtT sent the decision then the suspension must be lifted.’

23. The Decision Maker is the member of staff at DWP responsible for implementing a decision – either its own or that of the tribunal. A statement of reasons is the tribunal’s written reasons for its decision. A copy of this must be requested if any party thinks the decision is wrong and wants to appeal to a higher court, the Upper Tribunal. DWP is only entitled to withhold the tribunal’s award of benefits if it intends to take this step, and it must tell the customer it is doing so.

24. DWP’s explanation for the delay is not supported by guidance and is therefore an indication of maladministration. It was not entitled to withhold Mr A’s award of benefits because it did not request the statement of reasons. In line with the above and DWP’s usual practice, as it has explained to us, it therefore should have implemented the tribunal decision within one month. This means it should have increased the housing element of Mr A’s UC claim (payable to his landlord), removed the incorrectly added advance from his account, and refunded what it had already wrongly deducted from his benefits by May 2022.

25. We can therefore see the delay in doing so is an indication of maladministration. This is contrary to its Charter, which says it should ‘follow processes correctly’ and ‘provide you with the correct decision, information or payment’.

26. ICE found the above amounted to service failure and upheld Mr A’s complaint. Its recommendations meant DWP provided financial remedy totalling £350 to recognise the impact of its mistakes. Mr A does not think this is enough to put this right.

27. Mr A has told us he has been significantly impacted mentally by DWP’s mistakes. He told us money worries are a huge trigger for his mental health condition, and these events caused this to deteriorate. Mr A also tells us these events caused him to lose trust in DWP’s ability to do the right thing. We see this must have been a stressful time.

28. We understand Mr A has had longstanding concerns about DWP, many of which are not related to the concerns we are considering. He has successfully appealed other DWP decisions both before and after the events that are the subject of this complaint. We understand from our discussions that these other events have contributed to his dissatisfaction with DWP, periods of financial hardship (and the ensuing debt and housing uncertainty he has described) and the impact on his mental health. These other factors will in turn have also contributed to his loss of faith in DWP to handle his UC claim appropriately.

29. We must also recognise that the original calculation of his housing costs, which formed the basis of this appeal, will have contributed to his distress and frustration. Mr A has not asked us to consider a complaint about that decision.

30. The above means, as we explained to Mr A, we can only consider the impact of DWP’s actions relating to the incorrectly added ‘advance’ and the delays in implementing the April 2022 appeal decision.

31. We note the most significant material impact of these actions lasted between March and May 2022. DWP wrongly made three deductions of £81.21 per month during this period for the advance he had not received. It then reimbursed Mr A in July 2022.

32. We understand it will have been distressing and frustrating to be wrongly losing money he was entitled to receive. This will have clearly contributed to Mr A’s financial anxiety. We can therefore see DWP’s mistakes will have had an impact on Mr A for this four-month period between the first deduction being taken and being fully reimbursed for its mistakes.

33. Thereafter, the ongoing material impact was a shortfall of £33.33 per month in housing costs to be paid directly to his landlord. We understand DWP was also making deductions for separate overpayments he had legitimately received, and therefore were not caused by its mistakes.

34. Mr A remained concerned that his landlord might not be able or willing to house them without full rent indefinitely. Fortunately, Mr A told us his landlord was very understanding and did not threaten to evict him. Mr A and his family were allowed to remain in their property for the whole period DWP was underpaying the housing element of his claim.

35. We accept DWP’s ongoing delay caused Mr A frustration. We do not think we can attribute the ongoing significant psychological or financial impact Mr A describes to DWP’s mistakes after it reimbursed him in July 2022. This is because by this time, DWP had rectified his personal direct financial loss arising from the actions we are considering. He, thankfully, did not face a credible risk of eviction for the loss his landlord was incurring. We have not seen evidence that these events caused him to fall into debt.

36. This also means we do not think the impact of DWP’s mistakes is so significant that we can reasonably say they caused an irreversible loss of trust. Whilst a degree of the impact prolonged for 16 months, we have not seen evidence of continuous, serious mistakes. We cannot see that there is any systemic issue that DWP has failed to correct or put right for Mr A.

37. With the above in mind, we have considered if the £350 Mr A has already been awarded is enough to put things right. This amount falls into ‘level two’ of our Severity of Injustice Scale. Level two involves, amongst other factors, ‘a degree of distress, inconvenience or minor pain […] involving short periods of financial or other hardship’ and ‘where the person affected has to repeatedly chase the organisation to carry out an action.’

38. As set out above, we recognise some financial impact on Mr A for a four-month period. It is also clear from our conversations with Mr A that other decisions by DWP both during this time and prior to it contributed to the claimed financial hardship. We therefore cannot say that DWP’s maladministration is wholly responsible for this. We therefore think the degree of financial impact it caused falls within the relevant level two descriptor set out above.

39. We recognise Mr A continued to chase DWP for it to fully implement the decision, and this will have added a degree of frustration. We think this falls into the latter level two descriptor set out above.

40. This means we think the financial remedy of £350 is enough to put right the impact of DWP’s mistakes set out in this statement.

41. Mr A also told us he was very concerned about the conduct of his appointed caseworker who wrongly added the underpayment. Whilst it is not our role to investigate individual members of staff, DWP’s letter of 30 March 2022 confirmed it provided him with a new caseworker in light of his concerns. We think this is in line with our Complaint Standards which say that organisations should ‘openly welcome complaints so they can identify and resolve issues quickly’.

42. Overall, we can see that in providing a financial remedy, recognising and apologising for its unreasonable delay and addressing Mr A’s concerns about his caseworker, DWP has done enough to put things right.

43. This means we will take no further action on Mr A’s complaint about DWP. We can see this was a highly distressing period for Mr A. We hope our explanation is clear and helpful to him.

1. We have carefully considered Mr A’s complaint about DWP. We know that this was a difficult period, and we can see from the information he has provided how this affected him.

2. We have seen indications DWP incorrectly said Mr A’s Universal Credit (UC) account had received an advance in the sum of £630. We have also seen indications DWP took too long to recognise and put right its mistakes after a tribunal decision in April 2022. We have seen indications this impacted Mr A and caused some distress.

3. As we consider DWP has already taken appropriate action to put right the impact on Mr A, we will take no further action. We explain our decision below.