Disabled Leeds mum-of-three with PTSD taking DWP to court for being 'treated as less than trash' over Universal Credit payment

The woman said that she has been “treated as less than trash” by the DWP after she was forced to go to a foodbank and faced the possibility of homelessness when her benefits were delayed for a number of days at the start of October.

This was despite contacting them well in advance to arrange the payment to reflect the fact she was studying for a PHD in law and criminology and was receiving a student loan.

The woman eventually received the payment five days after it was scheduled but it was higher than it should have been due to an “administrative error”.

The DWP has requested she send back the excess amount, despite the woman saying that she spoke to the department when the money entered the account and was given the impression it wouldn’t need to be paid back.

The woman, who has PTSD after surviving a serious crime in 2019, said: “As a full time student and single mother, I rely on Universal Credit for survival.”

She said she contacted the DWP after not receiving her payment on October 6 and was told it was due to “a backlog of work they had to do”.

She said: "I was apologised to and told that it had been escalated internally and that I would receive a call by 6pm the following working day (October 7) to resolve the matter and there was no way I would be left without a payment.”

She said she never received a call or any money and, due to the bills for her home being scheduled for that weekend, was “plunged into £1,500 of debt overnight” and forced to go to a foodbank.

She said: “We literally had a whole weekend of no money at all.

"I was placed into a position of total human degradation and at a time of a global cost of living crisis.”

She said she continued to call up the department but was told the only way they could escalate the issue was by sending emails due to their communication lines not allowing them to make outbound calls to different departments.

"I said ‘we are literally destitute’ and the woman said ‘why don’t you just go to the foodbank’.

"I went into detail with her saying I feel I’m at the point where I need to jump off a bridge to get something.”

She then resorted to getting her local MP involved and finally received the payment on October 11, though it was £589 more than it was supposed to be due to the “administrative error”.

She said: “The thing is I had messages going back to June to them saying ‘this is what it is going to be’ and ‘this is the amount you need to take off me’. I didn’t want a situation where I was getting an overpayment.

"I called them up and told them and they just said ‘don’t worry it will be sorted’. They knew they were putting me in a position of overpayment.”

The DWP has since approached the woman requesting that the overpayment of £589 be sent back to the department, despite it having been sent due to an internal error.

She said: “It’s absolutely shocking considering I chased and chased this to make sure it didn’t happen.

"They are taking a victim and re-traumatising them.

"I find it totally abhorrent.”

She said she is now planning to take the DWP to court, having previously disputed with them in 2020 after she first went onto Universal Credit following her diagnosis with PTSD.

She said: “I was forced by the DWP to prove what had happened to me despite police evidence and a statement from a GP and forced to relive my experience repeatedly, which re-traumatised over and over again.

"I took them to court to ensure no other victims going through what I did would be treated the same. They admitted fault and discrimination and settled out of court, stating in writing that they would change their policy.

“Yet here we are again and they are doing it again to the same person!”

She added: “The reality is a very vulnerable woman, who has fought adversity and overcome what some deem impossible, has been re-traumatised by the DWP after they had already done it once before.

"That a family of four was left with no money and became poor overnight, all because someone didn’t process information supplied to them over a month ago.

"There is no way to complain and no one to intervene – so how many other victims are dealing with this and where is the accountability?

"I’m trying to rebuild my life and I have got this department that is actually setting me back. They are making things worse.

"Nobody should be left in that position. We had a legal document saying they would not do this again and when I brought this up they just ignored it.

"I’m lucky to have the backing of other students working in this sort of field but if you don’t have access to that you just wouldn’t know what to do.”

A DWP spokesperson said they “apologise unreservedly” for the delay to the woman’s payment, saying it was caused by “a manual processing error in verifying her student finance details”.

They added that they were “looking into ways we can improve our processes to prevent this happening in future”.