Has anyone seen the news today re the DWP having underpaid thousands of people on ESA between 2011-2013/?. They are now stating that they will be contacting all of these people and will be paying them the money they should have had. It seems the average amount owed to the majority is around £5,000, but some people could be owed up to £20,000 !. From what I can gather, this underpayment arose because when Incapacity Benefit claimants were transferred onto ESA from 2011, many were mistakenly put onto Contribution-based-based ESA instead of Income-related, which meant that many people who should have received Disability premiums (only available when on Income -related ESA) have not been receiving them. Apparently tbe DWP have been aware of this for up to 5 yrs and not done anything about it. I'm not sure how it has come to light now, but I've been searching online to try to find out. When you are placed on Contribution -based ESA as I was, after 12 mths they are supposed to transfer you onto Income-related ESA and you would then start to receive the Disability Premium/s. This didn't happen so the DWP now owe an estimated amount of £350 million to thousands of people. We need to be on the ball regarding this, as can you imagine the further cock-ups which will probably now happen while DWP are wading through lists of claimants whom they owe this money to and the many who will probably NOT receive any monies owed because, let's face it, DWP have yet again proven that they are incompetent. So why should anyone who now discovers they are owed money trust that the DWP will automatically now pay them this money, plus how long is this all going to take when it involves thousands of claimants ?. If anybody learns any more about this, I'd be grateful If they could post the info here.

Hello, I'm trying to find any information on Housing Benefit underpayments as I've not seen or heard of this before. There are 6 different entries on my benefit calculation stating xxxx has been recovered against underpayments (x 6) these amounts add upto around £1500. What does this actually mean to me they owe me or I owe them as the letters are very confusing? Thankyou for any advice.

Hi, I would be grateful for some help! My husband has recently received his third P800 underpayment notice for 2011/12 (already received P800's for 2009/10 and 2010/11) and I have been trying to work through the mountian of tax coding notices he received which covered these 3 tax years. I can see that the problem has occured as he received 2 personal allowances - he is both employed and is receiving a pension. However, the amounts of underpayments on the P800 do not correspond to the values shown as tax owing from previous years on the tax coding notices - the amounts on the coding notices vary greatly and are generally different each time a coding notice is issued! We have seen a tax advisor who said that we shouldn't worry too much about the amounts shown on the tax coding notices but this worries me as I was under the impression that the repayment restrictions on these coding notices should be calculated correctly so that it takes back the addtional tax caused by the underpayments. My main query is am I right in thinking that the repayment restriction shown on last coding notice issued (one has been recieived for the 2013/14 tax year) and the amount of tax this will pay back should equal the total amount of tax underpaid for all previous years in total? I hope this makes sense.....! Any help would be greatly appreciated, thanks, Clare