The mother of a teenager with cerebral palsy has demanded an end to the “sickening harassment” of unpaid carers after a significant legal victory against the government.
Nicola Green, 42, was pursued by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) for more than a year after she was accused of fraudulently claiming nearly £3,000 in carer’s allowance.
When Green insisted she was innocent, the DWP wrote to her employer without her knowledge to try to recoup the sum from her pay.
The part-time college worker, whose 17-year-old son has a number of health conditions, appealed against the fine before a tribunal judge, who quashed it in barely 30 minutes last month.
Speaking after her legal victory, Green said she had been treated “like a criminal” by the DWP over the £2,823.75 sum.
“I can’t believe what they’re putting people through,” she said. “[I’m] just a law-abiding person, who has never broken the law in my life. I’ve always tried to do things by the book … It feels like harassment.”
The DWP wrote to Green on 27 May to say it was considering appealing against the tribunal ruling and that it would not cancel the debt until then.
However, the department wrote to her again on Monday, days after being contacted the Guardian, to say it had cancelled the overpayment and that she would be offered advice about claiming compensation.
A DWP spokesperson said: “Ms Green’s overpayment has been cancelled. We are committed to supporting carers across the UK. Tribunals offer customers an opportunity to provide any additional information which may be relevant to their case, and we regularly gather feedback and learn from them.”
Green’s case is the latest in the Guardian’s award-winning investigation into the DWP’s pursuit of unpaid carers despite official errors that have plunged tens of thousands of vulnerable people into hardship.
The latest figures show that the government is clawing back at least £357m in carer’s allowance paid out in error over the last six years, leaving hundreds of people with criminal records and some with debts of more than £20,000.
The DWP has faced widespread criticism over its “cruel and nonsensical” punishment of family carers who unwittingly earned slightly more than the weekly limit to qualify for carer’s allowance, which rose to £196 a week in April.
The department is alerted whenever a carer oversteps the weekly limit but until recently only checked half of these alerts – and as few as 12% for a long time – meaning tens of thousands of people were unknowingly building up debt for years.
The controversial “cliff-edge” rule means that a carer who earns £1 more than the weekly threshold must repay the whole of that week’s carer’s allowance, currently £83.30 a week. That means someone who earns £1 a week over the limit for a year must repay not £52 but £4,331.60.
A Guardian analysis has found a sharp increase in the number of cases being quashed by judges in recent years as concern over the DWP’s actions have grown.
In the year to April 2025, tribunal judges struck out 42% of carer’s allowance fines, compared with 29% in 2019 and 15% in 2014. In total, the DWP has lost 898 cases at tribunal in the last six years.
Green, who works less than 14 hours a week at Bolton college, said she was reduced to tears by the DWP’s pursuit.
She juggles her term time-only job with caring for her teenage son, whom she did not wish to be named publicly. He has cerebral palsy, is deaf and has short bowel syndrome owing to complications arising from being born extremely premature, meaning he was hospitalised for six months from birth.
“They don’t care about you. They don’t care about your personal situation. They don’t care what you’ve been through and they don’t care how much you’re saving the system,” she said.
“It’s so unjust and it’s the injustice that’s driven me to challenge it. It’s sickening actually. The tone of the letters – they’re insinuating I’m a criminal. And going through the process you do feel like you’ve defrauded the system, however innocent it has been.”
The DWP claimed Green had breached the earnings rules on seven occasions between December 2018 and April 2024. Five of these related to a one-off Christmas holiday bonus from her employer. One was due to unexpectedly receiving sick pay. The final overpayment related to a pay increase awarded to all Bolton college employees.
However, tribunal judge Dianne Oliver ruled last month that Green had not in fact breached the rules because her average weekly pay was below the earnings limit. The DWP did not attend the 30-minute hearing in Bolton.
The judgment follows a similar legal victory by another unpaid carer, Andrea Tucker, who defeated the government in February.
The rulings are significant because the DWP routinely pursues carers on the basis of individual weekly earnings, rather than averaging them over a year. If the government took the latter approach, far fewer carers would end up with huge debts.