My wife who is a theatre nurse works part-time bank in a private hospital, during the second lock-down she effectively had no work has her hospital closed.
Encouraged by the Govt she applied for universal credit, she was given this and received roughly £90 each fortnight.
At the beginning of August her hospital re-opened and she returned to doing two days a week, at the same time she contacted (phone) the DWP and told them she had returned to work so did not need the payments anymore.
As you might guess they carried on paying the money right up until the end of September when they just stopped.
Yesterday my wife received a nice brown envelope from the DWP’s debit management department asking for £620 to be paid back for the time from August to September.
Ok bit of a pain but I guess it needs to be repaid.
BUT on top of the £620 they have slapped a £50 over payment fine!!! Saying that the fine is because we informed them too late about going back to work.
How is it our fault that one part of the DWP didn’t inform the payments part until nearly two months later when the payments suddenly stopped?
We both very aggrieved about his as this the first time either of us has made any claim in all of our working careers.
Any advice?
Should we challenge the fine… we have tried ringing but there doesn’t seem to be an obvious option to question the fine…. only pay them!
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Universal Credits fine new
Universal Credits fine new