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600 pocket £20k each in overpaid benefits
Sunday Express
|September 28, 2025
Taxpayers will be appalled at this'
NEARLY 600 benefit claimants overpaid by £20,000 or more last year have been allowed to keep the cash.
They pocketed a total of £18.1million - an average of £30,800 each - when administrators decided to write the debts off.
Most overpayments were triggered by innocent paperwork errors, but there were 76 cases of claimant fraud where the cheats were allowed to keep a total of £2.7million.
The 587 write-off cases are the worst recorded by the Department for Work and Pensions.
The DWP said a total of £6.5billion was lost to fraud last year and another £2.9billion to errors made by the claimant or officials.
The figures mean almost £26million in benefits is being paid out in error or fraud every day.
This story is from the September 28, 2025 edition of Sunday Express.
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