If this is your first visit, check out the community guide. You will have to Join us or Sign in before you can post.
Receiving too many notifications? Adjust your notification settings.
Question about benefit entitlement

Hello everyone. My mum is disabled and currently receives PIP as well as Widows benefit and income support.
Weekly she gets:
80.74 Widows Benefit
25.91 Income Support
and 466.74 monthly for PIP.
She also receives housing benefit which is paid directly to the landlord.
My question is could she claim ESA and would it leave her better or worse off? It's very confusing, I understand she might lose some benefits if she does so, so i'm wondering if it's worth it. She lives in a 3 bedroom counsel house with no savings.
Thanks for any advice.
Weekly she gets:
80.74 Widows Benefit
25.91 Income Support
and 466.74 monthly for PIP.
She also receives housing benefit which is paid directly to the landlord.
My question is could she claim ESA and would it leave her better or worse off? It's very confusing, I understand she might lose some benefits if she does so, so i'm wondering if it's worth it. She lives in a 3 bedroom counsel house with no savings.
Thanks for any advice.
Replies
We have a benefits calculator here that is a good starting point to figuring out what support your mum may be entitled to
Senior online community officer
It says something like, the law says you need to live on £106
then they add 20 something income support to the 81 widows benefit to make it add up to 106. It's like a top up.
Part of the 106 is made up of some money because "you are sick or disabled", which confuses me because she is not on ESA.
Please note that Universal Credit is replacing some benefits including income related ESA, Income Support and Housing Benefit. The roll out of this benefit is by postcode and so different areas will be affected at different times. I have put a link to a webtool below, if you enter your postcode it will tell you on making a new claim for benefit whether you HAVE TO claim Universal Credit.
https://universalcreditinfo.net/
Universal credit is significantly different to e.g. Income Support, Housing Benefit in terms of the rate of pay, how frequently payments are made and who payments go to.
If you are at all unsure contact a local advice centre for help.
Maria