A mum’s housing benefit was wrongly axed by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), who then tried to evict her when she couldn’t pay her rent.
The woman, 40, from Wandsworth, said that the local authority “dehumanised” her after they took away her benefit payments which led to £20,000 in rent arrears building up over the course of three years.
In an attempt to evict her from her home, the council then took the mother-of-three to court over the unpaid bills.
The woman, who was categorised as a “high risk claimant”, claimed that the council treated her as if she was not “human” throughout the ordeal.
Finally, after three years, Wandsworth Council accepted that it acted unlawfully in cancelling the payment and has paid her £19,281.06 in backdated benefits.
“I can see why people have turned to drugs and coping mechanisms because if I didn’t have loved ones around me, that’s exactly where I would be,” she told The Independent.
When the housing benefit was stripped in 2021, the newly-turned mum was living in council-provided temporary accommodation.
She soon began to receive eviction notices, including twice when she was in intensive care with her infant.
“My hair fell out. I had so many sleepless nights,” she said. “I had just had a baby.”
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Her lawyers believe that a defective algorithm used by the DWP to tackle benefit fraud is to blame for the error.
They threatened the local authority with a judicial review claim at the High Court but Wandsworth Council admitted that it had acted unlawfully just two days later.
“I’m just worn out,” she admitted. “Yes, I am relieved that I won the case. But why do I have to go through that in the first place?
“I took on so much stress, I was having sleepless nights, even reading through one document was hard for me. I just felt complete anxiety to open any letter. It was a nightmare.”
The Housing Benefit Accuracy award initiative (HBAAI), which was initiated by the DWP in 2020, ranks claimants based on their personal information.
Wandsworth Council later admitted that it had acted unlawfully
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“The [HBAAI] is a tool provided to local authorities to support them in keeping claims correct, it is for the local authority to carry out any claim reviews and make decisions on individuals’ benefit entitlement,” the DWP said when describing the service.
Around 400,000 of the two million claimants are flagged as “high risk”. However, between 2021 and 2024, a third of the claims were not found to be legitimate.
Councillor Angela Ireland, cabinet member for finance, admitted that there was an “administrative error” that was corrected soon after.
She said: “We are now confident that the claimant is receiving all of the benefits that they are entitled to.
“Wandsworth Council is committed to providing safe, secure, and affordable housing for all those that need it and endeavours to use lessons learned to improve our process and practice.”
