The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has been criticised for failing to waive Universal Credit debt caused by its own mistakes.
In a recent court case, the DWP admitted 370,000 Universal Credit claimants had received overpayments classified as "official error" in 2020-21 - costing more than £228million.
However, just ten of these overpayments from that year were waived.
This court case involved a single mother who took legal action against the DWP after she was overpaid £8,600 through "official error" payments.
The DWP then told her she had to pay them the whole amount back - even though she had reported multiple times that there may be an issue with her Universal Credit.
The £8,600 was paid to K, who can't be named for legal reasons, over the course of 18 months after her son enrolled onto an apprenticeship scheme.
K believed the change in circumstance would impact her eligibility for "child element" and "disabled child element" in her Universal Credit payments.
However, the DWP repeatedly told her that her allowance would not be affected by the change.
The department then changed its tune 18 months later and said K was not entitled to the extra elements and that she owed the DWP £8,623.20.
This sent K into a panic as she was already struggling financially.
This was when she decided to take the case to court - which she won in February 2023.
The court rules that K had done everything she was supposed to do to inform the DWP of her changes in circumstances - it then told the DWP to waive to £8,600 debt.
K is not the only person who has been affected by DWP mistakes like this.
According to figures secured by ITV News through a Freedom of Information request, in 2021-22, only seven debts - amounting to £76,000 - from overpayments were wiped by the DWP.
In the financial year ending 2022, only 27 people had their debts - totalling £226,000 - caused by internal mistakes cleared.
In the financial year ending 2023, the DWP received 126 waiver requests for debts arising from official error overpayments.
However, they only granted 29 requests.
The cost of the most recent official error figures will be released next month, the DWP said.
K told ITV that the Government was right to recover overpaid benefits on behalf of the taxpayer in many cases.
However, she believed that the DWP "goes too far" in pursuing debt caused by its own mistakes - sometimes years later - when the recipient had done "everything right."
K said: "Although it was about my case and how I was being treated, it was about trying to prevent this from continually happening to people so that people in my situation won’t have to continually go through this.”
After K's case, the court set out criteria the DWP should take into account when considering requests.
It also ordered the department to publish its policy guidance to help benefits claimants and their advisers make applications for debt waivers.
A Government spokesperson said: “We support millions of people every year and our priority is they get the benefits they are entitled to as soon as possible and they receive a supportive and compassionate service.
“We carefully balance our duty to the taxpayer to recover overpayments with our support for claimants on means tested benefits, and safeguards are in place to ensure deductions are manageable, including payment plans.
“Deductions help protect claimants from enforcement actions such as eviction, ensure priority debts such as child maintenance are still addressed and recover taxpayers’ money when overpayments are made.”
