Hi, my name is Pinkqueen123! I'm new here and I'm hoping someone can help me please as I'm worried..

Hi,

You do need to declare the full amount of savings that you have. Then the next section asks about disregarded savings, that's where you add the exact amount of backpay to be disregarded.

Ok, that makes it a little more complicated.

If you have £7000 of the backpay left, that is what you should declare in the disregards section. You should still put the total amount of all savings in the previous section.

You will most likely then be asked to provide bank statements from the date that you received this back payment.

Some capital can be disregarded for the purposes of UC & IR ESA.

As you've already said, arrears of benefit (back payments) are part of that.

They aren't safeguarded as such. They still need to be declared as part of your total savings. But they should then be deducted afterwards.

You can see the legal wording here:

ADM Chapter H2: Capital Disregards

The online form should ask you initially for your total capital. And then there should be another section asking about disregarded capital after that.

So for example, if you've got £12k now. You would put £12k in the capital section. Then £7k in the benefit backpayments disregard section. The forms have changed slightly since I migrated myself, so I'm not sure of the exact wording on that section now, but it should be easy enough to understand when you see it.