ESA And UC Claim

Dowen1994

Hi, Im hoping someone can help me and explain a few things for me. My Mother is on ESA and in the Support group she also claims UC  and is in the LCWRA group, her UC has deductions of £561 and it says this is an average of ESA she receives but I can't workout how this is an average of the amount she receives? Also Iv worked out her being one both ESA and UC. with this deductions makes her worse off by around £45ish. If I was to stop the ESA claim other than stopping the deductions would this have another effect to her council tax support or would she have to look for work etc. She is too disabled to look for work which is why she's in support group and LCWRA  but I don't want to mess things up by removing the ESA and end up losing her council tax support etc sorry its a long post but id be grateful for any help  

Kimi87

ESA is paid weekly and UC is paid monthly. 

So to get the ESA equal you multiply by 52 &  divide by 12
129.50 x 52 /12 is £561.

How do you work out that she is worse off by £45?

poppy123456

She is not worse off by claiming ESA as well as UC. ESA is a weekly benefit paid fortnightly. UC is a monthly benefit. To work out the deduction for ESA from UC you times the ESA weekly amount by 52 and then divide by 12 to get the monthly amount.. so £129.50 x 52 = £6,734 divided by 12 = £561.16/month deduction for her UC.

For her ESA there will be 1 month a year where she will be entitled to 3 payments, instead of 2.

I see no reason to stop her ESA claim for numerous reasons...
1/ It's not means tested like UC is. Therefore you don't know what her circumstances maybe in the future. UC is means tested so if she had savings or lived with a partner that earned too much her UC could stop but her ESA will continue.

2/ It's paid fortnightly which often helps to budget a little better.

3/ she will receive class 1 NI credits for ESA but only class 3 for UC.

So many people wish they had claimed ESA when they should have but missed out and now find out it's too late to claim it.  

Dowen1994

Thankyou it’s my fault I was working it out as 129.5 x 4 = 518, I couldn’t understand where the 561 came from!. Thanks again for your help 

poppy123456

No problem at all. Many people get confused by this, it's easily done. 

Albus_Alumni

Heya @Dowen1994 and welcome to the community. 

I'm glad to see you managed to sort that out. I just wanted to stop in and say a quick hello.