The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) is processing 200,000 cases where carer's allowance recipients were incorrectly given overpayments, with an estimated 25,000 carers potentially receiving full or partial refunds. However, charities warn that at the current pace, the reassessment project will not be completed until 2054, meaning some unpaid carers could wait years—or even die—before seeing justice.
Carers UK raises alarm over slow progress
Carers UK said it was concerned that so far just 1.5% of the total projected caseload had been processed, and at current rates the reassessment would take 27 years to complete. It is unclear whether any carers have been repaid.
Emily Holzhausen, director of policy and public affairs at Carers UK, said: “We are seriously concerned by the pace of progress of the reassessment exercise and would like to see a clear and realistic plan for speeding it up, to ensure that carers who have been wrongly given overpayments over the last decade get a swift resolution.”
MPs criticise DWP officials over scandal
Earlier this year, MPs criticised the “absolutely unacceptable behaviour” of senior welfare officials over the carer's allowance scandal, in which hundreds of thousands of unpaid carers were unfairly landed with huge debts. Sir Peter Schofield, the permanent secretary at the DWP, came under fire from a select committee, which accused him of giving out “a lot of blancmange” over the DWP's response to the scandal.
The chair of the work and pensions committee, Labour's Debbie Abrahams, asked Schofield: “Given what the report had said, that this was a massive failure of culture, let alone competence within the department, how on earth do you explain that? That behaviour is absolutely unacceptable, surely.”
Carers already waiting over a decade
Holzhausen added: “Many carers who are owed a refund or the writing off of their overpayment debt to DWP have already been waiting for years – some for over a decade – to get justice and fair treatment from the department. For those who still don't know whether their case will be reassessed and when, a lengthy reassessment process will only compound the worry and uncertainty they are facing. We cannot risk carers being left to wait for years for a resolution to an injustice which was not their fault.”
A DWP spokesperson said: “We are on track to complete the carer's allowance reassessment exercise within the three years previously announced. To support the exercise, we have been recruiting and training new Decision Makers in a rolling programme, ensuring we take the time to get things right. We have plans in place to increase resource at a steady pace over the course of the exercise.”
