UC and NSESA

robbo2000

@poppy123456 can you help please ?

Hi all,

I’m very confused! I’m new to all this - it’s a minefield!

Have been claiming the last 4 months due to ill health and not being able to work.

We get the following benefits;

UC is about £820/month. My earnings are zero but my wife has self employed earnings which fluctuate a bit, but are normally about £700/month and savings are currently about £12,000. We have one child at home.

LCWRA awarded last month £416

CARERS ELEMENT (my wife) £198

PIP awarded last month £737

TOTAL £2226

My first question is, would there be any benefits to claiming NSESA (within the support group) in addition to the UC?

My understanding is you can claim both but whatever you get from NSESA is deducted £1 for £1 from your UC. Am I correct or missing something?

Secondly, we have just been informed that our latest UC payment which is due in a few days, has been suspended. They want to verify our capital. A meeting has been scheduled for 6/3/25 at the Job Centre. We have to take all our bank statements and financial papers to show them. We submitted our figures on Friday evening and got the message about the meeting on Saturday morning. They told us we had a “payment block” put on our claim. I’m pretty sure it’s been instigated because our capital had reduced by £4300 since last month. We spent that money on additional mortgage payments (£2500), replaced an oven, dishwasher and hoover all of which had broken (£1000) and a puppy for my daughter (£800) as she has been suffering with her mental health since my diagnosis. I checked on the government website before spending the money as I was aware of “deprivation of capital” but according to .gov the items we have spent on would be allowed. We are now worried that we have done the wrong thing. Obviously DWP are unaware of what we spent the money on, so are likely just checking we haven’t just transferred it to a family member or friend. What’s your opinion/advice please?

Many thanks in advance

Rob

OverlyAnxious

Hi,

Poppy hasn't been on here much lately so she might not see this.

In order to claim NS ESA you need to have enough National Insurance contributions and have worked in the past 2 years. You are correct that there would be a deduction from your UC to the same value of the NS ESA payments, so there is no financial gain to claiming both. However, NS ESA gets paid every 2 weeks, which can help some people budget. And it provides class 1 National Insurance credits, whereas UC only provides class 3 NI credits.

Regarding deprivation of capital, there are no specific rules so it is a bit of a grey area, though buying all of those things within one month could easily raise suspicion. The mortgage payments is an interesting one. It is allowed to pay off debts that are owed immediately, however, if you're making additional mortgage payments, that may again be moving into a grey area. All you can do is provide the statements they've asked for and see whether they decide any of the spend was deprivation. You are allowed to appeal their decision if you disagree with it.

robbo2000

Thank you for your reply.

The mortgage was put onto interest only in November as we were very uncertain of how we would cope financially.
We had always had it set up as a repayment mortgage. The original monthly payments were £760 a month. For the last 4 months on interest only, they have been £160 a month.
So, that’s £600 a month difference for 4 months.
Our savings allowed us to pay these 4 payments of £600 each = £2400.
We are on a good fixed rate currently but that ends in May. The new rates will be higher come May. So by paying the extra £2400 means our monthly payments will be more manageable come May.

I just hope that DWP understand why we did this. It was not done with any other intention. I would have done it regardless of our current situation. We just wanted to reduce the overall mortgage commitment.

robbo2000

With regards to paying debt, in my case reducing the mortgage with additional payments…..

Section 50 of The Universal Credit Regulations 2013 states;

“A person is not to be treated as depriving themselves of capital if the person disposes of it for the purposes of:

• reducing or paying a debt owed by the person

REDUCING is the key word here.

https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2013/376/part/6