Not eligible new style esa, gap between benefit year and tax year

wilsh

hi,
I recently became ill due to a disability and then got made redundant from work. I seem to have slipped through the net for benefits and curious if anyone knows any alternatives or work arounds. I have worked the last two years, and prior to that was a PhD student for years (with minimal NI contribution made). However, DWP only look at the last two complete tax years before the current benefit year, which means 2024-2025 does not get taken into account. So basically an 8 month period of work from April (tax year) to January (benefits year) that will not be considered till 2026. What other alternatives are there? I am not eligible for universal credit. And why can you only make voluntary NI contributions that count towards the ESA if you were self employed?

poppy123456

Unfortunately that’s how contributions based benefits work. It’s always been the previous 2 tax years that count. A claim now would be 2022/23 and 2023/24. The tax years for benefits change on the first Sunday in January. Before that the years were 2021/22 and 2022/23.

The reason why is because if you weren’t self employed then you need class 1 and part of the eligibility criteria is you need to have worked and earned a certain amount of money in those tax years.

There’s no way around this until the tax year changes again in January 2026. Then the tax years will be 2023/24 and 2024/25.

You can claim NsESA as NI credits only if found to have Limited Capability for work.