Overhaul of carer's allowance checks

Ministers have announced an overhaul of the way carer's allowance overpayments are checked in an effort to fix the failing system, which has left thousands with life-changing debts, fines and criminal records.

- Patrick Butler

In a significant policy change, the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has been ordered to hire extra staff to investigate 100% of the carer's allowance earnings breach alerts it receives and swiftly notify carers if they are at risk of falling into debt.

Last year the Guardian revealed that for the last six years the DWP had chosen to investigate just 50% of alerts on cost grounds - even though this led to huge numbers of carers unknowingly accruing massive overpayments.

Campaigners hope the move could over time significantly reduce the number of carers falling foul of the system but warned thousands more would be unfairly hit by overpayments as huge backlogs of alerts are processed over the next few months.

Overpayments are devastating because people who breach the carer's allowance earnings limits of £191 a week must return the full £83.30 a week benefit payment, a "cliff edge" penalty that means going £1 a week over the limit for one year would result in the claimant being hit with a repayment demand not of £52, but £4,330.

The DWP's refusal over many years to properly check the real-time alerts of carers' earnings it gets from HMRC and use the data in a timely manner to prevent carers unwittingly running up overpayments has been a central feature of the carer's allowance scandal, exposed in a series of Guardian articles over the past year.