Carer Poverty Coalition open letter to the Chancellor – Autumn Budget 2025
Together with Carers UK and 50 organisations from across the country, Imago Community has joined the Carer Poverty Coalition in writing to the Government ahead of the Autumn Budget, calling for urgent action to resolve the ongoing issue of Carer’s Allowance overpayments.
While we welcomed the Government’s swift action to commission the Independent Review of Carer’s Allowance, led by Liz Sayce OBE, unpaid carers across the UK continue to face financial hardship and anxiety caused by systemic failures within the benefits system. Carer’s Allowance overpayments have left many carers struggling to pay off debts that could have been avoided with clearer guidance, better communication and more effective DWP processes.
As part of this open letter, we are calling on the Government to ensure that the Independent Review leads to three essential outcomes:
- New policies and processes must be put in place to ensure that there is accurate, transparent, and clear information so that carers can make informed decisions about workings and earnings
- Internal DWP processes need to be changed to ensure that carers do no incur overpayments as a result of poor practice.
- Carers’ overpayment debts must be written off, where carers received overpayments through no fault of their own, or due to systemic failures by the DWP
We are asking the Government to use the Autumn Budget to invest in delivering all three of these outcomes without delay. After years of avoidable hardship, this is a vital opportunity to show that carers are valued, to fix a broken system, and to deliver justice for unpaid carers who have borne the cost of these failings for far too long.