Benefits bill overpayments hit £3.1 BILLION in a year - and a third of that was down to bungling officials

Benefits bill overpayments hit £3.1 BILLION in a year - and a third of that was down to bungling officials
By Mail Online ReporterLast updated at 12:12 PM on 17th June 2010
More than £3billion was overpaid in benefits last year - amounting to almost £100 every second - it emerged yesterday.
Mistakes by bungling officials accounted for £1.1billion of the mistakes - the highest margin of error for a decade.
Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) officials were responsible for just over a third of overpayment blunders while fraud and customer error accounted for the rest.
The DWP annual report revealed errors by officials were responsible for a staggering 35per cent of overpayments in 2009/10.

Bungling: Officials at the Department For Work And Pensions at Whitehall paid out more than £1.1bn in incorrect benefits last year
That is compared to just 12per cent in 2000/01, when mistakes cost £400million.
Errors in the last financial year were also up significantly on 2008/09 - increasing from £800million of overpayments that year to an all-time high of £1.1billion.
The estimated total benefit expenditure, geniune and overpayment, amounts to £148 billion each year.

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But the £3.1 billion overpaid in 2009/10 is equal to around half of the coalition government's proposed £6 billion spending cuts.
Mathew Elliott, chief executive of the Taxpayer's Alliance, criticised DWP officials for the huge number of errors.
'This is a stupendous amount to be lost through fraud and mistakes,' he said.

Reform: Lord David Freud said the government would overhaul the system
'When the government is talking about making £6 billion of spending cuts, this figure puts into perspective the urgent need for welfare reform.
'The system is too complicated to understand and administer, simplifying the way benefits are handed out would mean less mistakes and less waste of taxpayers' money.'
Official error led to overpayments of £200 million in housing benefits alone and a further £150 million in pension credits.
Fraudsters claimed £260 million in housing benefit, £240 million in income support and £120 million in jobseekers allowance.
And customer error, where customers gave incorrect information or failed to update their details cost a staggering £420 million.
Overall a massive £880 million in housing benefit - 4.4 per cent of the total budget of £19.9 billion - was paid out by mistake.
Another £480 million, was wrongly paid in income support, making up 5.7 per cent of the total budget of £8.5 billion.
But on the flip side, the significantly lower amount of £1.3bn or 0.9 per cent of total benefit expenditure was underpaid as a result of customer or official error.
Meanwhile levels of overpayments due to benefit fraud have fallen over the last decade from £2.2 billion in 2000/01 to the current £1 billion sum.
Minister for Welfare Reform, Lord David Freud, said that the DWP was working to reduce the amount of overpayments.
He said: 'The decrease in the overall levels of fraud and error in the benefit system demonstrate the seriousness with which the Department for Work and Pensions takes this issue.
'These are the first results to take full account of the economic downturn and reflect the significant increase in the benefit caseload within the last year.
'However, the rise in the error figures for out-of-work benefits demonstrates that the system has now grown far too complex and is in need of radical reform.
'That is why the Secretary of State for DWP will be setting out his plans for overhauling the welfare system.'
The report was released by the DWP at the end of last month along with the State of the Nation report which found that families are able to claim up to £100,000 a year.
Secretary of State for DWP, Iain Duncan-Smith, announced the following day that the over-generous benefit system meant claimants branded workers 'bloody morons'.
An estimated 670,000 households were found eligible for benefits and tax credits worth more than £15,600 a year in 2009/10.
Of these, 50,000 households were allowed to claim benefits worth over £500 a week, or more than £26,000 a year. The average UK annual wage is £25,500.Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1287315/Benefits-overpayments-hit-3-1-BILLION-year.html#ixzz0r75y7uo4