Scores of carers overpaid more than £20,000 last year despite reforms

Carers were asked to repay £33m in 2025-26 as a result of DWP overpayments, new figures show. Photograph: Cultura Creative/Getty Images/Tetra images RF View image in fullscreen Carers were asked to repay £33m in 2025-26 as a result of DWP overpayments, new figures show. Photograph: Cultura Creative/Getty Images/Tetra images RF Scores of carers overpaid more than £20,000 last year despite reforms DWP brought in measures to tackle carer’s allowance scandal yet in 2025-26 there were 32,559 overpayments Scores of unpaid carers were hit with demands to repay sums of more than £20,000 and hundreds more put at risk of prosecution last year as a result of official failures in what appear to be continuing problems with carer’s allowance. New figures showed carers were asked to repay £33m in 2025-26 as a result of 32,559 overpayments, despite the introduction of measures over a year ago designed specifically to prevent carers falling foul of the system. The large number of overpayments indicates tens of thousands of carers continue to suffer under the government’s “business as usual” policy of maintaining the current discredited system’s penalties while gradually introducing reform. While ministers insist they are reducing carers’ exposure to punishing benefit injustices, the new figures suggest progress in tackling problems often compared with the Post Office scandal is slow, and that carers are continuing to pay a high price. Campaigners said it was unacceptable that overpayment levels were so high and warned that carers faced continued jeopardy under what remained a fundamentally outdated system unfit for the modern world. Labour MP Anna Dixon, the chair of the all-party parliamentary group on carers, said it was shocking unpaid carers were still being hit with large overpayment debts and left to shoulder the consequences of official failures. View image in fullscreen Anna Dixon, the Labour MP for Shipley. Photograph: Roger Harris/House of Commons She added: “I hope the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) will investigate why the numbers remain so high and be transparent with carers and parliament about the scale of this problem and what it intends to do to put it right.” Ministers vowed nearly two years ago, in the wake of an award-winning Guardian investigation, to correct longstanding benefit flaws and injustices that led over many years to hundreds of thousands of carers unfairly acquiring huge debts and, in some cases, criminal records. These included draconian “cliff edge” penalties that could land a carer with a £4,488 bill for earning 1p a week more than earnings rules over a year, and the introduction of internal guidance that unlawfully prevented carers from averaging irregular earnings to enable them to stay within weekly earnings rules. An independent review of carer’s allowance overpayments published in December found “systemic issues” and poor leadership by the DWP, rather than carer negligence or fraud, was at the root of the scandal.