Marvin OnumonuThe Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) will compensate 57,000 benefit claimants following a court ruling.
These payments, potentially reaching up to £5,000 each, are for individuals who transitioned from ‘legacy benefits’ to Universal Credit and lost ‘severe disability premiums’ (SDP) during the move.
The DWP acknowledged it did not adequately protect their incomes during this transition.
Law firm Leigh Day, who brought the cases, estimates that compensation could be more than £5,000 per person.
Civil servant Neil Couling confirmed the details of the payment scheme to the Work and Pensions Committee.
Couling said: “The courts have decided on all of these, and we are now moving to implement the various judgements of the courts in those cases.
“Because the courts decided that the transitional protection we were providing was not large enough, it needed to cover other elements.”
Couling outlined three groups of people who can expect a payment.
These include individuals due an additional transitional SDP element from 2020 onwards who still receive the benefit, those due an additional amount for the period between 2018 and 2020 who continue to receive the benefit, and those due an additional amount from 2018 onwards who are no longer receiving it.
