A man with significant learning difficulties has found himself £2,000 in debt because of an error in changing from ESA to Universal Credit.
And although his family and support workers are confident the Department for Work and Pensions will be ordered to pay the money after an appeal, they are upset at the Government's intransigence so far.
Stacey Gramlich, who has autism, lives in supported housing run by the charitable society Riverside, in Swindon.
He works at Phoenix Enterprises and earlier this year moved to Riverside housing with a lighter touch in terms of support.
In the move, he should have moved from Employment Support Allowance to Universal Credit.
An error which saw his parents Ellie and Don thinking his Riverside support workers were applying, and the support workers thinking his parents were, meant the application was not made for some months.
That meant the rent paid by the DWP to Riverside was not paid - leaving Stacey, 44, £2,000 in arrears.
He is in no danger of eviction – Riverside has worked with Stacey, his parents and Mike Bowden, a trustee at Phoenix Enterprises to agree on an instalment repayment plan – but Stacey is now trying to get back the money from the Government.
He said: “I don’t really understand money and things like that.
“But it seems that the different areas of the DWP don’t speak to each other. The cases get filed away and forgotten. I don’t really know what’s going on.”
Stacey’s father Don who lives in Devon said: “We thought for a while we would have to pay the whole amount back in one go and that would have been really difficult.
His mother Ellie added: “None of this is Stacey’s fault, so I don’t think he should be the one to be penalised. Nobody in the department seems to be talking to the people they should be.”
With Mike Bowden’s help Stacey has applied for a mandatory reconsideration of the decision not to make a back payment of the missing rent.
Mr Bowden said: “So far the DWP has not agreed to do that at all. It was a simple mistake – and the key point is Stacey would definitely have not been refused Universal Credit – so this needs putting right.
Mr Bowden said if the DWP doesn’t reconsider its decision then Stacey will ask for a first-tier appeal, to be heard by an independent panel, and he is confident of success.
He added: “We wanted to raise this because there will be other people in a similar situation who don’t have the support that Stacey has.”
South Swindon MP Robert Buckland said: “I can confirm that I have made a complaint to the DWP on behalf of Stacey, and I will continue to provide my full support to him until this matter is resolved.”
A DWP spokesperson said: “Mr Gramlich submitted a successful Universal Credit claim on 25 May. As he did not claim Universal Credit before this date, we were unable to backdate his award to January as requested.
“Mr Gramlich has applied for a Mandatory Reconsideration and we are currently reviewing the original decision.”
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