Contribution based ESA for a year?

System

This discussion was created from comments split from: Hi, my name is Burny!.

Burny

I have just been talking to dwp . Is it right that when your on esa contribution based. Your only on it for first year then you automatically go over to income based esa? I am also on middla rate care pip and high rate mobility  pip.  Have been on contribution based esa for 15 years . The fella I spoke to  from dwp  said it should of changed to income based esa 14 yrs ago and he's sending a form out for me to get income based which would mean a extra  80 pound a week . Maybe to get it back dated too. Could this be true ??? 

BenefitsTrainingCo

Burny,

There could be lots of things going on here. First of all, contribution based ESA can last for more than a year if you are in the support group. I don't know what group you're in, so it's difficult to advise on that point. But even then, it's possible to get income-related ESA on top of contributory ESA, and this is what you might be missing. It can't be 14 years ago though, cos ESA only started in 2008!

If you were on incapacity benefit or maybe severe disablement allowance in the past and the DWP moved you over to ESA, they may have missed that you were also entitled to income-related ESA. This happened to a lot of people, and meant they missed out on a lot of money. The DWP recently agreed that it would look through the cases of all the claimants who might be affected and pay them backdated money if their entitlement to irESA had been missed.  It sounds like this could potentially apply to you, and if it does, backdating should go back to whenever the DWP made the mistake.

Fill out the form carefully and if you have any questions about it, maybe ask on the forum - lots of other people will be in the same position.

Will

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