incapacity benefit/Universal Credit MESS!

lakehead

In October 2016 i was placed back on incapacity benefit by a tribunal and gave UC  a copy of the
judgement.  IC is treated as added income by UC  so wanted to move off IC and onto the non work relate group.  They wouldn't do this without a recent work assessment i waited until Oct 2017 before IB sent me and they placed me in the non work related group of UC.  Do i have a case to back date to October 2016.  Since IB was greater then the basic UC  my income dropped by over 150 pounds a month and i accumulated debt.  While it wasn't UC fault that i wasn't sent on a work assessment sooner i did ask them to move to the other group however they told me Decision Maker had to make that call and that was several months ago and they never got back to me.

Pippa_Alumni

Hi @lakehead, and welcome to the community!

This sounds like a frustrating issue for you. I've moved your post into our Ask A Benefits Advisor category, so hopefully somebody will be along to advise you further on this soon. 

BenefitsTrainingCo

Hello lakehead - this sounds like quite a complex series of events and decisions, and is further complicated by the rollout of Universal Credit and its status in your area at the time. It is definitely something that needs to be dealt with by an advice worker that can look at your paperwork, and get an idea of the timeline of the decisions, the advice that you were given, and any deadlines for challenging the decisions that may have been missed. The regulations dealing with misadvice,  good cause for late appeals and the role of the decision makers and assessors are complex too, and all this needs to be looked at carefully face to face. I would therefore recommend that you give the Scope helpline (0808 800 3333)  a call, and ask for the details of advice agencies, such as Citizens Advice, that you can go to locally, even if you have a to wait a bit for an appointment.

I do hope this gets resolved quickly and in the way you want.

Jayne