When am I due my first LWCRA payment? Or should I message UC?

jaysun

Hi all!

If someone could perhaps work out when I'd be due my first LWCRA payment, I'd appreciate it. I've seen you've been asked this same question umpteen times but I'm still unable to figure it out!

I ask because it hasn't showed up in my uni credit journal this month yet I gave in my first sick note on 22nd Dec '23. I was awarded it couple weeks ago now. My AP is 18 April -17 May and I get "paid" on 24th May.

So am I having to wait another month or do I need to message them with a "what's going on"?

Thank you for taking time to help :)

Albus_Scope

Hey there @jaysun welcome to the community. 😁

I'm still learning the ins and outs of LCWRA payments, so apologies if I don't attempt to answer, I'd much rather you got the right answer straight away. I just wanted to stop in and say a quick hello. ☺️

poppy123456

If 22nd Dec was the date you provided your first fit note. (not the date on the fit note) your waiting period will be as follows.

Jan/Feb, Feb/March, March/April.. LCWRA element starts from 18th April to 17th May and first payment should have been this month 24th May.

Did you continue to provide fit notes without any gaps up until a decision was made? if so then please double check what date exactly you provided the first fit note.

jaysun

jaysun

poppy123456

@jaysun were you meant to have posted a comment? I can only see 2 empty comment boxes.

jaysun

Hi Albus_Scope, all good :)

Hi Polly, cheers for answering. I just had a look through that dreaded journal! It says that my "health change was effective from 22nd Dec", but this was noted in my journal on the 3rd January, so it's likely they're using this later date, you think?

I suppose it became complicated since only the next day on 4th Jan they messaged me to say that payment had stopped because I wasn't fulfilling my journal obligations but this threat proved fruitless as they never did stop any payments, rather littered my journal with a bunch of subsequent threats which all came to no avail. Well I was having a headache at the time hence the LCWRA.

It's perhaps worth adding that during the next month I was warned to hand my fit note in by a certain date as I was pushing the time limit and I managed to do so, yet it was one day late. However, they never mentioned any problems with this and I was under the impression that all was ok (just DWP giving me a kick up the ****/passionately motivating me, whichever way you want to interpret it).

I'm just hoping that DWP wont be looking for any excuse to delay my payment but of course I won't get to know either way because something tells me if I ask them about this in my journal at best I'd get some vague answer, if any at all.

Well I can't help be pessimistic since I'm having to pay them back a somewhat trivial sum of only £10k, yep they only went and voided a previous claim because I never failed to tell them in my journal that I wanted out.

I called them up a few times to effectively sign off but apparently this didn't count since I didn't sign off formally in my journal. The thing was, I didn't know I had to sign off via the journal since it was all new to me, this journal thing, I just landed in it (DWP/signing on) due to being laid off because of COVID. Nobody told me I had to navigate a certain way through that new journal idea of theirs.

Oh well, I've gone off on a little ranting tangent here, apologies for that. As for the LCWRA, I guess I'm now hoping for next month?

Well Polly, if you managed to wade through that fine DWP mess of mine, cheers :)

jaysun

Oh well, I sat there writing out my reply only for it not to send! Instead it's turned out those two blank discussions you can see above.

So I'll start again. Will be saving a draft this time just in case it fails to send again. Perhaps it was something I wrote.

Hello Albus_Scope. Good luck with your LCWRA learning because it all just seems like a bungled mess to me. Not sure what I'm missing with this LCWRA but they, our cherished DWP, do appear to have a peculiar way of calculating these somewhat deferred payments.

Hi Poppy, thank you for trying to answer this tedious question I'm posing here.

My journal says that my: "Health change was effective from 22 Dec", yet this was written in my journal on 3rd Jan. So I imagine they're using this later date to calculate, you think Poppy?

As for any gaps, it turns out that I was once warned that my next fit note was due by a certain date yet I did manage to send it in, albeit one day late. Well, it was all a bit of a headache time for me, hence the LCWRA. However, nothing come of this, no complaints from DWP, just carried on as usual with them accepting my new fit note. The Dr subsequently handed me a 6 month sick note so no further problems there.

So perhaps this isn't as straightforward as I first suggested. Yet assuming they had no issues with my timeline of fit notes, if they are taking that 3rd Jan as my starting point, would that mean I shouldn't hope for any extra money until June 24th? After all, if these payment dates are computer generated then surely DWP are just going to turn around to me with some: "Computer don't lie", helpful comment.

Cheers Poppy :)

poppy123456

The date you provided your first fit note on 3rd Jan doesn’t change when the extra money is paid from. This is because you still provided that fit note in the middle of AP 18th Dec to 17th Jan, which doesn’t count anyway because it has to be full assessment periods. This means your first payment should still be 24th May.

Although there should be no gaps in your fit notes otherwise it can affect when the extra money is paid from. If the gap is just one day then it would be very harsh indeed to penalise you for that one day!

Put a message on your journal under the payment section and ask about the LCWRA element. Remind them of the date you provided your first fit not and tell them your calculations say that it should start from AP 18th April to 17th May with first payment being 24th May.

With regards to that huge overpayment I’d advise you to get some expert advice from an agency near you because it does seem rather complex.