The Facts Behind An Ongoing Injustice.

#1: Carer's Allowance Overpayments. Carers UK, along with The Guardian's Patrick Butler and Josh Halliday, expose the facts and systemic failures faced by working carers.

Carers Week is next week (June 9 - 15). The theme is ‘Caring about Equality.’ As Helen Walker, Chief Executive of the charity Carers UK, said: “Unpaid carers are the backbone of our society, propping up fragile health and social care systems and providing essential care to friends and family who need their support. Despite carers’ huge contribution to our communities, many carers still feel undervalued and unsupported.”

However, there is a crucial backdrop to this year's campaign that demands our attention

An Ongoing Injustice: Carer's Allowance Overpayments.

This sickens me.

Facts were revealed through research and data collected by Carers UK, as well as by Patrick Butler, Social Policy Editor, and Josh Halliday, North of England Editor, of The Guardian newspaper¹ .

In this first article, I’ve condensed their work into a summary for absolute clarity. I’ve been following the Carers UK press releases and news pieces over the last year.

References: The Injustice of Carer's Allowance Overpayments.

You can review the references, source materials and insights in the chronological list of hyperlinked articles by clicking on this link.

Unpaid carers in the UK are being plunged into debt and prosecuted for fraud by the Department for Work and Pensions over its own benefit overpayments.

- Patrick Butler, Social Policy Editor -

Summary: Carers have been asked to repay substantial debts, often exceeding several thousand pounds, due to overpayments they received. It has happened despite the government having systems in place to flag potential overpayments. In some cases, the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) did not act swiftly enough to prevent overpayments from accumulating. In other cases, information shared by caregivers was not acted on within the same department. Only 50% of overpayment alerts were investigated.

What is Carer's Allowance? It's a benefit for individuals who care for someone with an illness or disability for at least 35 hours per week. Currently paying £83.30 per week (2025/26), which amounts to approximately £2.38 per hour, significantly below the National Minimum Wage of £12.21 per hour.

Last year (2024/25) it was £81.90, approximately £2.34 per hour.

The Current Crisis: 144,000 carers have fallen foul of strict earnings rules. The system has created a devastating situation where unpaid carers are being pushed into debt and prosecuted for fraud by the DWP over benefit overpayments.

The 'Cliff-Edge' Problem The system operates with a severe 'cliff-edge' rule: if carers earn £1 over the weekly ‘earnings limit’ (currently £196 as of April 2025, it was £151 from April 2024 to 2025), they must repay their entire benefit.

For example, in 2024, Carer’s allowance earnings rules mean a carer who earned £1 more than the £151 weekly threshold for 52 weeks would have to pay back not £52 but £4,258.80 ( the 2024 Carer’s Allowance £81.90/week multiplied by 52)². Those with overpayment debts over £5,000 also face potential criminal prosecution.

The Earnings Limit is based on income AFTER taxes and pension. In other words, if you are in employment, the following would be deducted from your gross weekly earnings (or gross profit if you’re self-employed) before your earnings are taken into account for Carer’s Allowance:

• Income Tax

• National Insurance

• half of any contributions to your pension

• certain business expenses and some alternative care costs³

For example, if you earn £200 a week (after tax and National Insurance have been deducted), you wouldn’t be eligible for Carer’s Allowance. However, if you paid £20 into a pension, half of the £20 could be deducted from your earnings.

Your earnings for Carer’s Allowance would then be: £200 - £10= £190. Being under the earnings limit, this would mean you would meet this condition to claim Carer’s Allowance for that week.

Systemic Failures: The DWP has admitted to checking only 50% of earnings alerts, leading to massive accumulated debts (May 9, 2024). Despite having data-matching technology since 2018, the department has consistently failed to notify carers of potential breaches. This inadequate staffing and monitoring have left many carers unaware of mounting debts until it's too late.

Bottom line, more carers are being notified of repayment debts now as the DWP processes the remaining 50% of earnings alerts that were previously unaddressed.

The Human Impact While unpaid carers save the UK economy an estimated £184 billion annually, 1.2 million of them live in poverty, with 400,000 in deep poverty⁴. The situation has forced many to reduce working hours or leave employment entirely. Recent welfare reforms are expected to exacerbate the problem, with 150,000 people set to lose their carers' benefits by 2029/30, resulting in a reduction of £500 million.

Structural failings are creating inhumane and unnecessary stress for carers in the most vulnerable situations.

This is adding more insult to injury, considering the delay in social care reforms to 2028⁵

The crisis has drawn parallels to the Post Office scandal, with carers being criminalised for systemic failures rather than deliberate fraud.

An ongoing Guardian investigation has revealed how draconian and rigidly enforced rules, coupled with a failure by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) to notify carers of overpayment, have meant carers have run up debts of up to £20,000, causing public outrage and leading to comparisons with the Post Office scandal. - Patrick Butler, Social Policy Editor and Josh Halliday North of England Editor.⁶⁷

What is the Government doing?

An Independent Review was established in October 2024 and is being led by Disability policy expert Liz Sayce OBE. It’s due to report in summer 2025. It published its ‘terms of reference’ on December 9th 2024. The review is examining how earnings-related overpayments have occurred and identifying potential changes that can be made.

There was some initial controversy when a DWP whistleblower, Enrico La Rocca, was initially blocked from giving evidence to the review; however, the DWP later confirmed that staff would be encouraged to submit evidence.

Carers UK’s report and recommendations

Click here or the image to read the report. Lloyds Bank Foundation England & Wales provided a grant to Carers UK to work to address the issue of overpayments on Carer’s Allowance and the earnings threshold.

The three-year project examines systems and processes related to claiming Carer’s Allowance that could be improved. It also aims to enhance carers’ and professionals’ knowledge of overpayments and the earnings limit, to address issues earlier.

Some of the Key themes shared by Carers in this report:

• Many carers did not understand the rules around the earnings limit

• The reasons why carers had gone over the earnings limit varied

• Overpayments often came as a shock to carers. They had a negative impact on carers’ mental health, and caused carers’ financial problems. Some carers decided to stop claiming Carer’s Allowance even when they were entitled to it

• Many carers said that the Carer’s Allowance earnings limit affected their employment situation: cutting back on hours or giving up work completely

• Carers raised concerns about communicating with the DWP: a lack of empathy and understanding, and time consuming processes

• Carers also raised concerns about DWP processes

  • Delays between when the carer went over the earnings limit and when the DWP contacted them.

  • DWP not acting on the information carers had provided

  • Information not shared between different departments within the DWP

  • Averaging of earnings. Carers with irregular incomes felt that their pay should be averaged over a longer period of time so that their Carer’s Allowance was not taken away as a result of an infrequent payment. Many carers were under the impression that their pay would be averaged over the year as happens for self-employed carers.

I recommend reading the Carers UK Report in full to fully grasp the impact this is having on carers.

An estimated 2.8 million carers in the UK are in paid employment⁸.

How many more of the 2.8 million carers will receive letters from the DWP?

The worries, paperwork, and uncertainties may be too much for any carer to navigate while working. Some may decide to stop receiving Carer’s Allowance or stop working.

If you or anyone you know has an overpayment of Carers Allowance, seek support information from Carers UK or via their helpline at 0808 808 7777 from Monday to Friday, 9am – 6pm (excluding Bank Holidays), or you can contact them by email (advice@carersuk.org).

Inequalities and injustices continue.

Some people, news articles, and parliament have raised questions about why more individuals, particularly those over 50 years old, are leaving work. I don’t.

I applaud the work of Patrick Butler and Josh Halliday: Guardian journalists win Paul Foot award for carer’s allowance coverage. (May 20, 2025)

Please ‘❤️’ LIKE the article to raise awareness of this to others

1. Guardian journalists win Paul Foot award for carer’s allowance coverage. Patrick Butler and Josh Halliday honoured for their coverage of ‘enraging and heartbreaking’ DWP scandal” (May 20, 2025)

2. It’s important to remember that all utility bills (gas, electricity, water) increased in 2024, and the ‘The Winter Fuel payment’ was cut last year.

[21 May 2025] Sir Keir Starmer has announced plans to ease cuts to winter fuel payments, in a U-turn following mounting political pressure in recent weeks.

More than 10 million pensioners lost out on the payments, worth up to £300, when the pension top-up became means-tested last year.

3. What kind of expenses can deducted from pay? Contact the Carer's Allowance Unit as the rules for Carer's Allowance may differ from HMRC's treatment of expenses.
If, because of your work, you have to pay for someone to look after the person you care for, or a child under 16 who you or your partner get Child Benefit for, you can deduct those payments from your earnings up to the value of half your earnings (after the above deductions if they apply).
However, this will not apply if the person you are paying is a close relative of either yourself or the person you are looking after (a close relative is a spouse, partner or civil partner, parent, son, daughter, brother or sister).

4. Summary of Facts and Figures about Carers in the UK (Updated March 2025). November 2024, Valuing Carers 2021/22: the value of unpaid care in the UK, Dr Maria Petrillo, Dr Jingwen Zhang, Professor Matt Bennett. The research used Census data and the UK Household Longitudinal Study (also known as ‘Understanding Society’) over time and place to estimate the cost of unpaid care.

5. The Guardian April 17 Article by Patrick Butler and Kiran Stacey “UK government accused of ‘delay and drift’ over adult social care talks”

Lib Dems say not a single all-party meeting on issue has taken place since plan for national care service was unveiled

Social care experts criticised the government in January for putting a three-year timescale on changes that they argued could be put in place with a year. They said the issue was not about how to change social care but agreeing what should be done.

Care providers have urged rapid reform of adult social care, saying the sector faces serious financial problems as a result of the introduction of national insurance and minimum wage rises this month, which have added £2.8bn to their costs.

Many have said they face “tough decisions” as a result of rising unfunded costs, including handing back unviable care contracts to councils and evicting residents, reducing care quality, laying off staff, reducing their hours or freezing pay.

6. Kate Garraway: persecution of carers has ‘horrible echo’ of Post Office scandal. Presenter, who cared for late husband, said she was approached by people in street pleading for intervention

7. The British Post Office scandal, also called the Horizon IT scandal, involved the Post Office pursuing thousands of innocent subpostmasters for apparent financial shortfalls caused by faults in Horizon, an accounting software system developed by Fujitsu. Between 1999 and 2015, more than 900 subpostmasters were convicted of theft, fraud and false accounting based on faulty Horizon data, with about 700 of these prosecutions carried out by the Post Office. Other subpostmasters were prosecuted but not convicted, forced to cover shortfalls—caused by Horizon—with their own money, or had their contracts terminated. The court cases, criminal convictions, imprisonments, loss of livelihoods and homes, debts, and bankruptcies led to stress, illness, family breakdowns and at least four suicides. In 2024, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak described the scandal as one of the greatest miscarriages of justice in British history.

A four-part television drama, Mr Bates vs the Post Office, starring Toby Jones as Alan Bates, was broadcast over four evenings on ITV from 1 January 2024. The drama brought the scandal to the centre of public and political attention

8. Juggling work and care – a growing issue August 2024

There are nearly 2.5 million carers in employment (excluding full-time students) in England and Wales, according to the recent ONS Census 2021 – 9% of the total number of people in employment. Of those, 2 million are employees, and 445,000 are selfemployed. In Scotland, a further 268,000 carers are in employment (of which 234,000 are employees, and 34,000 are self-employed. In Northern Ireland, 125,000 carers are working either full-time (81,000) or part-time (44,000). Combined, over 2.8 million carers are juggling work and care across the UK.

ONS (2023) Economic activity status by provision of unpaid care by general health.