Asylum Seekers Receive £13 Million in Benefits Due to Error

It now seems that the agency that is responsible for securing Britain's borders has paid out £13 million in benefits to asylum seekers over the past two years. The UK Border Agency discovered during the 2008/2009 year that it carried on making payments for accommodation and direct support to a number of asylum seekers that they should not of been sending money to.

Officials found out that the system designed to stop payments as soon as the decision was made for asylum support to be canceled had not operated as intended. This means that cash continued to be paid out much longer than intended.

Some £9.6 million was overpaid in 2008/09. Another £3.5 million in 2009/10. Of course, now the UK Border Agency has introduced new checks to ensure that the payments are stopped as soon as a ruling is made that the person is no longer entitled for the support. However, this does not help get back all the money that the agency has already lost.

The UK Border Agency accounts also revealed that they had overpaid staff some £4.3 million. This was due to a late notification of unpaid leave or employees quitting their posts. Some £1.4 million of the cash has been written off as unrecoverable. There were some 600 cases in which employees were being overpaid.

The agency was also forced to hand over almost £3 million last year in compensation. This included the £2.1 million to 40 under-18s who were wrongly detained as adults. They also had to pay £330,000 to a refugee who was treated as an adult rather than a minor due to delays in processing paperwork.