What the UK owes you in 2026

There is no single counter for how much the UK owes its residents in unclaimed money each year. Adding up the published figures from HMRC, the ORR, the CAA, Ofcom, the FCA, and a few large class actions gets you somewhere between £15 and £25 billion sitting on the table. This page is the catalogue: every scheme that an ordinary UK household might be owed something under, with a realistic figure, who qualifies, and a link to the deep guide. Use it as the index of where to look.

By Andrey · Updated August 2026 · 12 min read

Transport: trains, flights, parking, TfL

Transport is where most people first realise the UK has a real compensation culture. Four schemes, all reasonably easy to use:

Train Delay Repay: most operators pay 25% of the single fare for delays of 15 minutes or more. £80 million plus is left unclaimed every year across the network. Full guide →
UK261 flight compensation: for delays of three hours or more, cancellations, and overbooking. £220 to £520 per passenger depending on distance. 85% of eligible passengers do not claim. Full guide →
TfL refunds: incomplete journeys and maximum-fare overcharges, claimable for 8 weeks. A single claim is usually £1 to £9, and a working Londoner who misses the occasional tap is typically owed £20 to £60 across a year. Full guide →
UK parking fines: 33% of council PCNs that go to challenge are overturned. The grounds that win, and how to challenge a private parking notice, in the guide. Full guide →
Ferry delays: four journey-length bands, with 25% or 50% of the fare back depending on how late the crossing ran. Full guide →
Coach delays: rights apply only to scheduled routes of 250 km or more, so most UK coach journeys carry nothing at all. Worth knowing before you spend an evening on it. Full guide →

Deciding how to claim matters as much as knowing you can. Two pages compare every route, free and paid, with the fee each firm publishes and the pounds you keep: flights and trains. For London, the TfL routes are all free.

HMRC: tax reliefs and refunds

HMRC publishes lists of reliefs and overpaid taxes worth billions in aggregate, and only a fraction is claimed.

Marriage Allowance: up to £252 a year, four years of backdating, free on gov.uk. About 2 million eligible UK couples have not claimed. Full guide →
Uniform tax relief: £12 to £200+ per year depending on occupation, for any employee who launders or repairs work clothing themselves. Full guide →
Professional Subscriptions: relief at your marginal tax rate on subscriptions to bodies on HMRC List 3. Full guide →
Mileage tax relief: the approved rate for using your own car at work rose from 45p to 55p on 6 April 2026, with 25p above 10,000 miles. If your employer pays less, the shortfall is claimable, though relief arrives at your own tax rate rather than as a cheque. Full guide →
Working From Home tax relief: £6 a week of additional allowance for employees required to work from home. Narrower than during the pandemic, but still real. Full guide →
Overpaid PAYE / P800 refunds: HMRC issues around 4 million P800 reconciliations a year, with median refunds around £200. If you changed jobs mid-year, had two jobs at once, or were emergency-coded, you may be on this list.

Council Tax: discounts and band challenges

The biggest ongoing-value category for a typical household.

Single Person Discount: 25% off, worth around £570 a year on average in England. Includes households where everyone else is a student, apprentice, or live-in carer. Full guide →
Wrong Band Challenge: typically £200 to £400 a year ongoing plus a £4,000 to £12,000 backdated lump if your band is too high. Real risk that the band can go up, which the guide is honest about. Full guide →
Severe Mental Impairment disregard: if a resident has dementia, a severe learning disability, or severe stroke effects and receives a qualifying benefit, they do not count as an adult. Up to a 100% exemption.
Disability Band Reduction: if your home has features required by a disabled occupant, your bill is charged as if the property were one band lower.
Council Tax Reduction (means-tested): covers low-income households; rules vary by council.

Housing: deposits and rent

Tenancy Deposit Protection: landlords must protect deposits within 30 days. The penalty for not doing so is 1x to 3x the deposit, plus return of the deposit. Full guide →
A deposit your landlord kept: all three schemes run a free dispute service, decided on the evidence you send, with a three-month window after you move out. Only about 1 per cent of protected deposits ever reach it. Full guide →
Rent Repayment Orders: the maximum doubled from 12 to 24 months' rent on 1 May 2026, and the change is not retrospective, so the date of the offence decides which cap applies. Full guide →
Tenant Fees Act refunds: landlords cannot charge for reference checks, inventories, check-outs, or renewals since 2019. Refunds of £50 to £600 per illegal fee.
Rent overpayments on void Council Tax: if you moved out and your landlord kept charging Council Tax equivalents, you can ask for the period back.

Bills: water, energy, broadband, telecoms

Water Surface Drainage Rebate: £30 to £120 a year if your home does not connect to the public sewer for rainwater. Most water companies backdate six years. Full guide →
Smart meter missed appointment: £30 automatic compensation per missed install slot. Full guide →
Broadband and landline auto-compensation: ~£9.76 per day for total loss of service after two working days, ~£29.15 per missed engineer appointment. Full guide →
Warm Home Discount: £150 paid to most state pension recipients on Pension Credit; some other low-income households also qualify.

Finance: motor finance, class actions, banking

Motor finance commission redress: a court suspended part of the FCA scheme on 2 July 2026, so no payout date exists. Complaining to your lender is free and open until 31 August 2027. The FCA expects 12.1 million agreements to qualify, averaging about £830. Full guide → How to check, free →
Mastercard Merricks class action: £200m settlement for ~46m UK adults resident here as adults 1992-2008. Full guide →
Authorised Push Payment fraud reimbursement . Banks must now refund APP fraud under the Payment Systems Regulator's mandatory scheme (rules tightened October 2024).
Section 75 chargeback: if you bought something between £100 and £30,000 on a credit card and the retailer failed to deliver, your card issuer is jointly liable. Useful escalator across many other categories.

How to prioritise these in your own head

The realistic order for an evening's audit:

If you are a married couple with one basic-rate taxpayer, start with Marriage Allowance. Two minutes of eligibility check, ten minutes of form.
If you live alone (or with disregarded adults only), claim Council Tax Single Person Discount. Five minutes on your council's site.
If you have ever had car finance, lodge a holding complaint with the lender now to be in line for the FCA scheme on 30 June.
If you were a UK adult between 1992 and 2008, bookmark mastercardconsumerclaim.co.uk for the registration window.
If you wear a uniform or pay a professional subscription, run the P87 on your Personal Tax Account.
If you rent and the deposit story feels off, check all three deposit schemes.

That is six items, an evening of effort, and a realistic £1,500 to £4,000 of refunds and reliefs in the first full-pass year.

How Untap helps

Untap watches your inbox for the recurring four (trains, flights, parking, TfL) and Nell, our voice agent, walks you through the one-off categories above. We do not file on your behalf and we do not take a cut of any refund. The whole product is free while we work out a sensible business model.

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Questions readers ask

I am one person. How do I work out which of these actually apply to me?

Go in this order: (1) HMRC items based on your job and marital status (Marriage Allowance, Uniform, Professional Subs); (2) Council Tax based on who lives in the home; (3) Housing if you rent; (4) Motor Finance if you have ever had car finance; (5) Mastercard if you were a UK adult between 1992 and 2008. Cover those five and you have done the broadest pass any single household can do in an evening.

Is there really £15 billion sitting around unclaimed?

Adding up the headline numbers regulators have published: £80m+ in train Delay Repay, £200m+ in flight UK261, £365m in TfL incomplete journeys over six years, £7.5bn in motor finance redress, £200m Mastercard, plus HMRC tax reliefs and Council Tax discounts in the low billions. Yes, the order of magnitude is right. The bulk of it is concentrated in motor finance and PAYE refunds.

Why does Untap not just file all of these for me?

Three reasons. First, several of these are deliberately set up to be free and low-friction (HMRC, the FCA scheme, the auto-compensation codes) so a third-party fee would be parasitic. Second, the most reliable way to get an accurate result is for you to be the one talking to HMRC or the council. Third, claiming on someone else's behalf for a percentage is what claims management cowboys do, and we are not that.

Check if you can get money back

See what applies to you

Free with a sign-in, and we never take a percentage. We do not file claims for you either. That part stays yours.

This guide is general information, not legal or financial advice. Read the scheme's own rules before sending a claim. If a number here looks wrong, tell us and we will correct it: how we handle corrections.