Unpaid carer wins overpayment penalty case against DWP | Carers

Unpaid carer Andrea Tucker has won a legal victory against the Department for Work and Pensions, overturning its demand she repay £4,600 for alleged breaches in benefit rules.

Tucker, a part-time charity shop worker who until recently cared full-time for her elderly mother, said the tribunal ruling had left her “stunned and relieved” after months of stress.

Her case had been highlighted in a Guardian investigation into carer’s allowance injustices caused by draconian and rigidly enforced rules on overpayments. Hundreds of thousands of unpaid carers have been saddled with huge debts.

Tucker’s plight was taken up by her local MP, the Liberal Democrat leader, Ed Davey, who raised it at prime minister’s questions last Wednesday. The prime minister, Keir Starmer, promised to look into the case.

Weeping tears of relief after the social security tribunal hearing in Sutton, Surrey, on Tuesday morning, Tucker said she had been inspired to challenge the DWP by post office operators who fought for justice.

“It’s been the most stressful year for me and my family, but like the Post Office scandal, sometimes the little people have to stand up and be counted. It’s a huge weight off my shoulders,” she said.

Davey said: “I am delighted that Andrea has won her long battle with the DWP, but it should never have come to this. The DWP should not have demanded repayments from her and certainly not forced her to go to a tribunal, when she was already looking after her ill mother.”

Many thousands of unpaid carers, like Tucker, have been asked to pay back often huge sums in recent years for inadvertently breaching earnings limits rules for carer’s allowance.

The benefit has become notorious for the harsh punishments imposed on carers who overstep its weekly earnings limits and the failure of the DWP to alert carers when breaches happen, meaning they can unknowingly build up huge debts.

The latest official figures show more than 137,000 unpaid carers are paying back more than £251m after unwittingly falling foul of the drastic “cliff-edge” rule on earnings limits. This means a carer who received £1 more than the current £151 a week threshold for 52 weeks would have to pay back not £52 but £4,258.80.

Tucker said when she contacted the DWP in 2019 to inform them she was returning to work, she was told by officials she would not be penalised if her total earnings, averaged over a 12-month period, did not exceed carer’s allowance earnings limits.

She presented figures to the tribunal showing in each of the following five years her average income, calculated retrospectively, kept within the rules. She would regularly work six hours a month for nothing to ensure she could fulfil her work contract while continuing to claim carer’s allowance.

The DWP contacted her in April 2024 to say she must repay £4,600 in accrued overpayments relating to 16 separate earnings breaches over the previous five years.

A DWP representative told the court the earnings breaches were not an issue of “fraud or dishonesty” on Tucker’s part but a “technical and administrative” issue relating to internal DWP rules about whether her earnings could be averaged in this way.

In allowing the appeal, the judge said Tucker’s retrospective averaging arrangements were lawful. “You were at all times entitled to carer’s allowance, and the overpayment falls by the wayside. There is no overpayment,” Ms Justice Edwards told Tucker.

Helen Walker, chief executive of Carers UK, said: “Far too many carers are currently repaying debts that they should not have been given in the first place. If averaging rules were applied fairly and carers informed quickly when they potentially breached earnings limits, many would not be in this situation.”

A DWP spokesperson said: “This government is committed to supporting carers across the UK and we will carefully consider the tribunal’s written decision.

“We understand the struggles facing so many carers, which is why have launched an independent review of carer’s allowance which is exploring how earnings-related overpayments have occurred and what changes can be made.

“Alongside this, we have already taken action by boosting the carer’s allowance earning threshold – a move that will help more than 60,000 carers stay in work and keep much needed cash.”