Internal statistics from the Department for Work and Pensions have laid bare the scale of overpayments to unpaid carers, with 15,000 debts logged so far this year – including 50 worth more than £10,000.
And that number could yet rise dramatically, with 29,000 potential overpayments flagged by HM Revenue and Customs that have yet to be investigated.
Figures released under Freedom of Information legislation show that in the first half of 2024-25, DWP began clawing back 15,134 overpayments to unpaid carers who have at some point breached the benefit's earnings threshold.
Fifty of the overpayments registered between 1 April and 30 September were worth upwards of £10,000, including two totalling more than £20,000.
Unpaid carers who spend at least 35 hours a week looking after someone who receives certain benefits are eligible for the allowance, which is worth £81.90 a week.
However, carers can only claim the benefit if they earn less than £151 a week after tax, National Insurance, pension contributions and allowable expenses. If they breach the earnings limit in any given week, even by a small amount, they lose the entire week's allowance.
Carer's allowance overpayments came under scrutiny earlier this year, when a Guardian investigation revealed tens of thousands of carers had been hit with overpayment notices after breaching the earnings limit, often by a very small amount. In many cases, DWP did not identify the overpayments until months or years later, and in some cases, carers were threatened with criminal prosecution.
The latest statistics clearly show that some of the overpayments identified since April date back multiple years, as the allowance is worth a maximum of £4,258.80 a year.
More than a third of the overpayments recorded in the first six months of this year – 5,328 – were worth between £1,000 and £1,999.99. A further 1,783 were worth £2,000-£4,999.99
The majority of the overpayments recorded in the first six months of this year – 4,122 – were worth less than £500, with 3,642 worth between £500 and £999.99. DWP confirmed that the figures relate to the number of overpayments, rather then the number of individual carers affected.
However, a separate FoI request reveals the number of carers who could be forced to return overpayments could still rise drastically.
The FoI request asked how many Verify Earnings and Pensions alerts had been received for carer’s allowance claimants so far in 2024-25. The VEP service compares HM Revenue and Customs earnings and pensions data with DWP benefit data to identify any discrepancies.
While DWP had received 1.13 million VEP alerts from HMRC as of the end of October, many of these did not require investigation, the response said.
So far, 34,000 of the alerts had been investigated as of the end of October and 10,000 resulted in an overpayment being detected. All of the figures supplied were rounded to the nearest 1,000.
There were 29,000 carer’s allowance VEP alerts awaiting further investigation as of 5 November, according to the response.
In both FoI responses, DWP noted that the data has been taken from the department’s internal figures and has therefore not gone through the same quality-assurance checks as its published official statistics.
Last month, work and pensions secretary Liz Kendall commissioned an “open and transparent” independent review of carer’s allowance overpayments, after it emerged that tens of thousands of carers were being made to repay significant overpayments.
Announcing the review, which is being led by former disability rights charity chief executive Liz Sayce, Kendall said there were particular concerns about carers who had been forced to make repayments after breaching the earnings limit for the benefit by a “small amount”.
A government spokesperson said: “We recognise the challenges carers are facing," pointing to an increase in the carer's allowance earnings threshold for 2025-26 to £196 per week announced at last month's Budget.
“We have also launched a review into carer’s allowance overpayments to prevent people who devote such time and care to others from facing difficulties in the future," the spokesperson added.
Have you been affected by carer's allowance overpayments? Get in touch with beckie.smith@civilserviceworld.com