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mezza91
Member Posts: 3 Listener
Hi I'm just wondering if anybody could help me as I need some advice. I haven't been able to work since November 2016 due to depression, anxiety and emotionally unstable personality disorder I had my assessment for esa in June 2017 and was put into the support group of the contribution based esa, the following month I was awarded high daily living component of pip. After recently looking at all of it in really confused about the disability premiums basic, sever, enhanced, with esa as their are so many conflicting stories out their whether imentitled to it theirs are some saying you have to be on income related to qualify, other parts it says you have to be out of work for a year and other saying if you don't claim careers allowance which I don't and receive the high daily live rate you qualify, my registered person phoned up yesterday to speak to esa and the woman advised me to fill out a form online which I did with my registered person and they asked question whether I lived alone which I don't, am I in receipt of careers allowance which I don't do I get high rate of dailiy living for pip which I do is parnter registers blind he is not and that was it. If I didn't qualify why didn't she tell me on the phone that I didn't and not have me fill out the form as if it doesn't apply to contribution surely it's in their database?or do you still get it for contribution or being out of work 12 months? She said I would hear back in the post in the next couple of days so I'm just a little bit confused can anyone help thanks.
Replies
Scope community team
Thanks for your post and welcome to the Community.
Specialist Information Officer - Cerebral Palsy
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The reason you don’t get an answer on the phone is because you’ve rung an outsourced call centre. Decisions need evidence and so all that you told the ca;l centre worker would need to be passed to a decision maker and then checked.
What Mike says is absolutely right - the call centre won't have the knowledge to tell you, but the information you gave should be used to make a decision on whether you can get income-related ESA.
To clarify - you can ONLY get the extra premiums in income-related ESA. There are lots of reasons which would stop you getting income-related ESA, including having a partner who earns too much or just works too many hours.
Each premium has some additional rules as well. There isn't a disability premium in ESA, so no need to worry about that one. For the severe disability premium, it's not about whether you get carer's allowance but about whether someone else gets it for looking after you. However, in your case, I'm assuming your partner isn't on PIP/DLA, and you've said that he isn't registered blind, so I don't think you are entitled to the severe disability premium.
If you're on the highest rate daily living component of PIP, then that is relevant for the enhanced disability premium. You might be entitled to that, but you won't be able to get it if you can't get income-related ESA for another reason (for example, because of your partner's work).
I hope this helps! There are so many rules, it is confusing, and I know the DWP don't explain it - but see what happens, & if you don't understand the answer you get in the post, feel free to come back to the forum for advice.
Will