Is this right?

bettyboo72

Hi , my son claims carers allowance which is £260 . He recently applied for universal credit and was told he is allowed roughly £400 month . His 1st Payment today for uc was £90 ! And it said they take off thrbcarers allowance from it . Is that right??? 

Ails

Hi @bettyboo72 and welcome to the Community.  It is nice to meet you and thank you for your question.  I am afraid that I don't have the answer to it, but there are some members who are very good at guidance on benefits and one of them is @poppy123456, who I will tag in and hopefully she will be able to advise you.  I wish you well in getting things sorted out.  All the best. 

poppy123456

Hi and welcome,

Thank you @Ails for that tag, i can certainly help with this.

@bettyboo72 when claiming Carers allowance as well as UC and other other old legacy benefits, the carers allowance is always deducted £1 for £1 from the UC amount. You don't actually need to claim carers allowance to claim the carers element of UC, the only advantage to claiming the carers allowance is that it pays class 1 NI Contributions, where as UC pays class 3.

For the carers allowance they deduct £286 per month because UC is paid monthly and carers allowance is paid weekly and worked out as a monthly payment it's £66.15 x52 = £3,489 divided by 12 for the monthly payment gives a total of £286 per month.

If he's under 25 then his standard allowance will be £251.77 + carers element £160.20 = £411.97 - £286 = £125.97 UC monthly payment, Carers allowance will then pay him £66.15 per week.

If he's over 25 then standard allowance will be £317.82 + carers element £160.20 = £478.02 - £286 = £192 UC monthly payment. Then carers allowance will pay him £66.15 per week.

He needs to make sure that UC are adding the carers element of £160.20. If it's not added then he'll need to report the changes on his journal.

Hope this helps.