IR-ESA Support group to UC and needing to talk/see someone?

So everything went super smooth, didn’t need to go visit the jobcentre, verified identity, got awarded the LCWRA element and received my first payment...and then I woke up which is when the male bovine stool sample that is reality and the DWP hit me full force again.

Tried to send my mum in my place to the job centre to verify ID but they refused her. She had my driving licence, original birth certificate, P60, bank statement, NHS Medical card and a photo of my face next to them all. She also took her own passport, driving licence and a signed note from me saying they had my explicit permission to do it on my behalf. Nope.

In the end had to arrange for a home visit which happened yesterday which took about 10 minutes for the lady to look at everything, mark it all down, check my bank account was the right one they pay the money into and then left.

A few hours after she left my journal got updated and told me I was getting my first UC payment. Only it has me receiving the standard payment and not the extra LCWR element because I’m in the ESA support group.

Made a journal entry about it, got a reply a short while later explaining that ESA needs to contact UC to work out what additional elements I need to be awarded.

Looks like an end might be in sight but nope. Get a telephone call today around 16:00. My parents are out so it doesn’t get answered. Phone rings again and an answer machine message is left. It’s someone from my local jobcentre wanting to talk to me about my ESA.

Check my journal and it seems that at around 13:00 today a telephone appointment was made for around 16:00 so I could agree to my new ESA commitments.

Unfortunately, in my journal we had stated my mom had permission to answer calls on my behalf and added her mobile number. The lady from the jobcentre rang her mobile after ringing the house phone and mom, being out in a crowded place, not able to fully focus on what was being said or what she was agreeing to made another appointment to do my ESA commitments next week.

The problem with all this?

We made it clear in my very first journal entry that phone conversations are not an option for me. I just had all this out with them when dealing with the home visit to verify ID for goodness sake.

So now I’m in the middle of writing another journal entry stating that the phone appointment next week isn’t an option for me and requesting something else be arranged.

Before I make it though I wanted to ask here what other options there are for me to agree to commitments if not over the phone and not going down to the jobcentre. Can they send me a form I can sign? Can I get another home visit by someone who witnesses me signing a form agreeing to the commitment? What’s stressing and worrying me is I tell them phone conversations aren’t an option for me and they come back and say there are no other options besides doing it in person at the jobcentre.

Hey, thanks for the reply.

This implies I should be able to request they cancel the phone appointment and instead let me agree to the commitments on the journal?

Thinking about it I already agreed to commitments when making the UC application. So I guess it would make sense I should be able to accept new ones for ESA via the journal as well? Is this what others have been able to do as well?

But I already know what the appointments about. It’s to agree to my new ESA commitments. They have made it clear what the appointments about. Asking what it’s about would be silly?

The problem is they’ve made an appointment for me to agree to my new commitments over the phone. This isn’t an option for me. Going to a jobcentre isn’t an option either.

Ok, so an update...

Got no response back about having that ‘considered’ home visit but did get a notification in my email the day before telling me the phone appointment was still set for tomorrow.

Wanting to try and make sure they understood if they rang they would be speaking to my mum and not me I sent a message to them in morning of the appointment reiterating this and expressing concern that the phone appointment hadn’t been cancelled and home visit booked in its place.

At around 3 that afternoon I then get a reply basically telling me that the person who mentioned a consideration for a home visit was answering it from a contact centre, like that somehow meant it was ok for them to basically lie, and that this type of appointment wasn’t able to be done via a home visit and that it can only be done via phone, office or video call and if I failed to do it via one of these methods my claim would be closed and I would lose transitional protection if this happened. I was then told it was in my best interest to take the phone appointment today.

At the time it felt more like a threat. They basically made me an offer I couldn’t refuse. Talk to us on the phone or we’ll end your life as that’s what it ultimately amounts to.

However, when the phone call actually occurred my mum answered it and came and got me so I could listen in. The lady on the other end allowed her to do all the talking while I listened on speaker phone and seemed very understanding of the problems I have with talking on the phone.

She explained what the call was about and that the ESA commitments were the same as the UC ones I already agreed to and asked if I was ok with agreeing to them. I nod my head and my mum tells her I’m nodding my head in agreement. She then says thanks and ends the call.

So on the one side this was good. Didn’t need to actually talk on the phone in the end.

On the other side it’s like what the heck was that? I could have just as easily not been there and agreed to nothing. If they didn’t need to actually hear my voice say anything why the heck couldn’t I have signed and returned a form in the post or agreed in the journal?

I can’t help wondering if maybe I just got really lucky and had a really nice lady realise the problems I have and accepted the agreement from my mum instead because in the journal we had given her “complicit consent to speak on my behalf” after she’d visited the jobcentre to try and verify my ID and the lady there told her to put that in the journal so she could take phone calls for me when we we’re trying to sort out the ID.

If this is the case I guess that’s good and I’ll be eternally grateful to that lady but at the same time its like well you could have said that this is what would happen ahead of the appointment save me worrying about it so much and getting little sleep while sounding like you were threatening me just a couple of hours ago!

So yeah, that was one thing.

Few days later I got a letter in the post which contained a copy of the new ESA commitment form I’d agreed to. It was all filled out by the lady. She said she’d be sending me it before she ended the call just as a record for me to keep and I didn’t need to do anything with it.

This reignited my annoyance because it’s like, so there is a form I could fill out and sign after all!

After that I got a couple more letters. The first one was the standard welcome message for new style ESA telling me an appointment will be made for me with a work coach which I knew to ignore.

Second letter came a few days later detailing the new payment amounts I would get for my new style ESA claim.

Then nothing till today.

Today I got a message in my journal telling me UC had overpaid me between Feb and March and an amount was going to be deducted from what I’m entitled to this month to make up for it.

I was sort of expecting this since my ESA payments never stopped after I made my UC claim.

The important thing now though is that under the deductions in the new payment statement it says I’m now entitled to the Limited capability for work and work-related activity amount.

So for the most part I’m claiming victory and have a happy ending at last in the thing that was stressing me out the most and needed to be done right I now have confirmation of being done, yey. \o/

What has now left me more confused than stressed, though there is still plenty of that still occurring, is how in the attached pdf letter they sent me in the journal telling me I was overpaid and they were going to deduct what I was overpaid from my new entitled amount, it both does and doesn’t appear like they have done this.

They say I was overpaid 182 between Feb and March. Ok, fine. Makes sense as I can see on my bank statement I never stopped receiving ESA payments every two weeks during that time.

If I deduct 182 from 358 which is what I also got paid by UC last month at their standard rate plus savings deductions then that gives me a total of 175 which is what the new statement I’ll be paid this month reflects.

However the new statement also seems like it’s been calculated so that 175 is what I’ll also be getting on a regular basis each month from now on as well.

It adds up the standard rate of 393 and the extra amount of 416 because I now get the LCWRA element giving me a total entitled to amount of 809 a month from UC.

They then deduct 598 for also receiving new style ESA and 34 for having some savings.

Total deductions -633 leaving a monthly UC given amount of 175.

This makes sense until I remembered the letter said they had OVERPAID me the PREVIOUS month.

I see no sign of any additional deductions occurring to ‘take back’ the amount they overpaid me last month when a got a UC payment of 358, not 175, along with the new style ESA payments of 276 every two weeks.

So the way I see it this means either 175 isn’t the new amount going forward from now on and is just for this month only to pay back the 182 I owe them and next month a new calculation will occur with a new amount but that, as far as I can tell, should still be 175 OR what they’ve done is calculated the amount I should now get each month but forgot to take back the amount I got overpaid the previous month?

I have a letter basically saying you owe us 182 but when I look at what I’m next getting paid it seems like I’m just getting paid the correct amount I should be receiving going forward now the LCWRA element has been added and the ESA amount deducted without the owed 182 being deducted as well.

This has left me confused as to what the actual amount I should be receiving month to month from now on should actually be and whether or not they have calculated this month’s payment correctly so that it results in them taking back the money I was overpaid.

By my reckoning I should be getting 175 a month from UC going forward and either receiving 0 amount of it this month and a little bit more taken off next month’s to pay back the 182 over-payment I’ve already received or, like they said in the letter, they take off a little bit from the ongoing 175 payment so that I only receive say 150 of it this month and next month etc till the 182 has been paid back over a number of months so I don’t end up receiving nothing this month.

Yet this isn’t indicated as going to happen anywhere on the new payment statement for this month.

So confusing!

But I much prefer to be at this stage of process rather than still stressing over getting awarded the LCWRA element and navigating the nightmare obstacle course of verifying ID and agreeing to commitments over the phone.

The claim itself seems like its done now which is good. Hopefully I won’t need to worry about the non-payment side of things for a while now.

Just wish I understood what my new payment statement will mean going forward. Think I’m just going to have to wait a couple months to find out to see how or if it changes next month and if the overpaid amount is just deducted separate to what is said on the new payment statement.