There is currently a brouhaha concerning people having to repay their carer’s allowance because they exceeded the earnings threshold. I have the opposite problem. I am a carer for an autistic adult son and, depending on his circumstances, I sometimes work, and sometimes stay at home and claim carer’s allowance. I did some work over Christmas and, as always, informed the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), as the pay took me over the earnings threshold. I made a new claim in January when work ended. Four months later, it still hasn’t made a decision, and I am having to survive on a credit card, racking up debt I will struggle to repay. I could weep.
JN, Fareham, Hampshire
Carer’s allowance can be claimed by anyone who spends at least 35 hours a week looking after someone with a disability and earns less than £151 a week. It is now worth £81.90 a week and, at the time of writing, you calculated you were owed more than £1,300 – a lifesaving sum in your circumstances.
The DWP has been condemned for belatedly reclaiming payments from thousands of claimants who unwittingly strayed above the earnings threshold.
You did the right thing and told the DWP you were ineligible for the two months you were working, but you, too, have been left out of pocket. Claims are supposed to take between three and six weeks to process, but there appears to be a backlog, though the DWP is not admitting it. According to online support service Mobilise, some members report waiting up to 15 weeks for a decision.
The DWP scrambled to oblige the day after I questioned it. It says: “We have apologised for the delay, and awarded her carer’s allowance and will pay the arrears.” It declined to answer why it had taken so long and whether it accepted there was a backlog, but added, after I asked a second time, that it aimed to process claims “as quickly as possible”.
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