Today we launch a report on Carer’s Allowance overpayments. This is an issue Carers UK has been campaigning on for some time. Large overpayments have a devastating impact on unpaid carers.
Carers UK’s recommendations to the DWP include:
- Sending alerts to carers when their earnings potentially breach the earnings limit
- Improving information sharing and processes within the DWP
- Improving the information available to carers and their interaction with DWP
- Raising the Carer’s Allowance earnings limit to 21 hours per week and pegging it to the National Living Wage
- Taking steps to remove the hard ‘cliff edge’ of the earnings limit and replacing this with a taper to earnings
- Writing off substantial overpayments where carers could have been notified sooner
- Conducting a full review of Carer’s Allowance level and its eligibility criteria
We are continuing to gather the experiences of carers who have had an overpayment of Carer’s Allowance and they can be shared with us anonymously. If this is you, then please click here.
To access the full report click on the link below:
ca-overpayments-report_web_small.pdf (carersuk.org)