No recovery or back payment for old terminated sickness benefit payments

In the past 6 weeks, UWV has started reviewing 203 ongoing sickness benefit payments, 378 terminated sickness benefit payments, and 12 terminated Wazo payments. In these cases, there may be a recovery or back payment. For payments terminated more than 6 months ago, no back payments or recoveries will be made.

In June, it was reported to the House that since 2016, for a part of the sickness benefit payments, the income deduction has not been (fully) implemented in determining the amount of the benefit. Additionally, UWV has found that approximately 3000 Wazo payments have been incorrectly reduced. A sample check by UWV has established that approximately half of the recipients were overpaid, and a quarter were underpaid.

Since these are short-term benefits - lasting a maximum of 2 years - it has been decided to leave payments that were terminated more than 6 months ago untouched. For most people, this works in their favor. This approach also minimizes uncertainty among former recipients of a sickness benefit and places little pressure on UWVs execution. People can always submit a review request themselves.

Mariëlle Paul, Minister of Social Affairs and Employment: “For these payments, employees and employers have provided their information properly, but the government has not taken the correct action. That is simply not good, and we must learn from what has gone wrong here. For people who still have a sickness benefit, we will correct the error. But there are also many people who once received a benefit but have since moved on with their lives. We should not create uncertainty about the past for them. Therefore, we will leave old terminated payments alone.”