nav[aria-label="Primary Navigation"] { padding: 0; & ul { list-style: none; width: 100%; display: flex; flex-direction: row; justify-content: start; align-items: start; gap: 30px; padding: 0; & li { margin: 0; } & ul li { list-style: none; } } }

We want to hear from you: please tell us about your experience of the online community.

Lost ESA after moving to UC

tashtosh

This discussion was created from comments split from: Questions about universal credit.

Find more posts tagged with

Comments

tashtosh

Hi I'm tash tosh
I have severe and disability and have gone over to uc and they have taken 160 amonth away from my esa and also have taken my extra room allowance for my carea away from me !! They have have ruined my life I carnt pay for any treatments I'm heaverly in dept after stopping my rent and my essay for 5 weeks what the hell is going on (bye tge way they don't back date )

Pippa_Alumni

Hi @tashtosh, and welcome to the community!

So sorry to hear this, I hope we can try and help. Have you tried contacting the UC helpline to see if they can explain why this has happened?

Universal Credit helpline
Telephone: 0800 328 9344
Welsh language (make a claim): 0800 012 1888
Welsh language (report changes): 0800 328 1744
Textphone: 0800 328 1344

It might also be a good idea to check out the online benefits calculator and check that you're claiming all you're entitled to.

[Deleted User]

Hi Tashtosh

I agree with PippaScope that it'd be best to phone the UC Helpline to find out directly from the DWP why you get so much less UC as opposed to your "legacy" benefit - ESA.

I see though that the amount of difference is about £40 per week, so I will suggest here a possible calculation that might apply.

If you live alone and get (the daily living component of ) a disability benefit and ESA, the ESA is calculated as:
personal allowance £73.10 pw
support group £36.55
enhanced disability premium £15.90
severe disability premium £62.45
Total ESA £188 per week

Whereas on universal credit, the same person would get:
personal allowance £317.82 pcm
limited capabilty for work related activity element £318.76
Total UC £636.58 pcm, or £146.90 pw.

As you see, the difference is about £40 per week. There's no transitional protection if the reason you have moved to the new benefit is that a change of circumstances triggered a new claim to a "legacy" benefit. Typically, this happens where someone moves house to a new local authority area and has to make a new claim for housing benefit.

I hope my hunch is right, and so this explains what happened to your income. If your circumstances are quite different form this, then please ignore!

Best wishes

Gill_helpline

tashtosh

Yes it is exactly this .....

Nystagmite

Have you informed them that you have a carer, hence why you need the two room rate and not the one?

[Deleted User]

Hi Tashtosh

Your housing amount in universal credit shouldn't be different from the housing benefit you would have got,previously, although it's the DWP not the council who are authorising and paying you your housing costs under universal credit.

Perhaps you could try to get up to date medical or social services evidence for your need for an overnight carer, to promote your payment for a second bedroom in your universal credit housing costs amount claim.

(I'm wondering too whether it might be good idea to get a social services care needs assessment now, as there are treatments that you are not having now because of the decrease in your income - could they be provided another way, either through a direct payment if the treatment is say some kind of therapy, or through the NHS (I realise that the answer may be no, but it might be worth trying).

Gill_Scope

whistles

Ah Gill you

I knew someone could do the maths for me.

So let me get this straight.

People on sdp won't get sdp on top of their UC limited capacity? Does anyone know why they are trying to tell people about the transition protection when they intend to have everyone on below the uk pension?
They are bringing everyone in line with the national living wage.
Yes there is support for the severely disabled, but the long term sick are being "dumped and pensioned off"
Living below the pension isn't living.

[Deleted User]

Hi Whistles

Good to hear from you.

So if your circumstances don't change so that you (would normally) need to claim a "legacy" benefit, then you can currently carry on getting your current means-tested benefit(s). An attempt to make a new claim to a "legacy" benefit is what triggers a claim to universal credit.

There is no SDP in universal credit; there is financial acknowledgement of a person being unable to work, nor to do anything towards eventually returning to work; but there is no acknowledgement of disability as such. No SDP, no EDP, only the limited capability for work related activity (LCWRA) amount added to the personal allowance when you pass the work capability assessment and are placed in the LCWRA group.

Contrary to some popular belief (as you suggest above), there is no transitional protection at present if your circumstances change. You go onto universal credit and it may well be less than your existing benefit (ESA for example).So this is how the person who posted here lost money when they moved house.

Transitional protection only kicks in when the person is moved, by the DWP, onto universal credit at "managed migration". This is when not just new claims but existing claims are moved onto the new system - the date for this hasn't been announced yet for sure, but it's not before the beginning of 2019.

I'm not sure about the national living wage. I don't think that benefits are calculated according to that at all - Parliament sets down the amount of money that they think people need as a minimum to live on, and that's the basis of benefit personal allowances. If there is a connection with the national living wage, it is not obvious!

(I ran out of time here, researching the national and living minimum wage and the Minimum Income Standard (MIS), a benchmark created in the UK, now used in many other countries, which sets out to lay down the amount you need to earn to have a standard of living that is accepted by the general public as a decent level of income.

https://www.gov.uk/national-minimum-wage-rates

http://www.minimumincome.org.uk/results
(That is the MIS for a single person - it's massively more than benefit rates)

If anyone can say how Parliament has worked out how to assess personal allowances for welfare benefits from there, that would be great. I must get back to work!

Best wishes

Gill_Scope

whistles

Thanks for replying and posting this. I need time to sit and read those links properly.

I am puzzled where they get their figures from because a pension is £159.55 and according to the changes the long term sick is £12.65 less than the state pension. It's assumed probably that these people have savings or property from having worked to fall back on.

I don't mean to compare us with the elderly- but if you are less mobile and your condition isn't going to see you in work. Living/ existing below what's considered an acceptable level, isn't acceptable.
It's probably not connected to the living wage, but they did bring that in after they decided what people needed to earn to live. But they haven't given that amount to the sick, so how do we now live?

As an aside I lost my sdp when I lost the pip care. So I guess I won't see that again because I will be migrated to UC before my review is due. But I will get some back with the UC being more than current.

ScopeHelpline

Hi Whistles

Thanks for your comment. It's true that the benefit paid to working age people who are either too disabled or too unwell to work is often way lower than that paid to people who have reached the state pension age, to the extent that it is massively difficult to live on.

On a slightly brighter note, perhaps, if you have ESA and your circumstances don't change in such a way that your entitlement to income based ESA ends, then you would keep your existing benefit when you are migrated onto Universal Credit. I realise thought that this only helps until your circumstances change again. It's when your circumstances change that money is definitely lost, as the law stands at the moment.

There is a judicial review pending about the lack of premiums on Universal Credit, but again, this will take time.

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2018/feb/04/universal-credit-faces-judicial-review

I am sorry not to be able to write something more cheerful.

Gill_Scope

whistles

UC is more than my current ESA. I'm in limbo until they migrate people. My area goes live in four months but not full service.

I can't afford to stay here and I can't afford to move either.

ScopeHelpline

Whistles Hi

Now I am getting confused. I thought that you had already moved and that you lost money when you went on to Universal Credit? IF that is the case, then surely you are in a full service universal credit area now.

I must be missing something.

Gill_Scope

whistles

ScopeHelpline said:

Whistles Hi

Now I am getting confused. I thought that you had already moved and that you lost money when you went on to Universal Credit? IF that is the case, then surely you are in a full service universal credit area now.

I must be missing something.

Gill_Scope

I have not moved naturally or migrated.
I lost money when I didn't qualify for pip care and the sdp went from the ESA. So on paper UC is going to pay me more, though it's still a loss.
Sorry to confuse you.

ScopeHelpline

I see now.

Thanks for the explanation.

Gill_Scope

Component react.suggestedcontent had an error.

The value must be greater than or equal to 1.

Sign in or register for free

Get more out of your online community by signing in or registering