Benefits

Hi @JALANkin

Welcome to the community. 😊 From my experience you have really come to the right place for support, help on practical matters and friendship. 👌

HOUSING BENEFIT

As you are claiming ESA, you should be entitled to housing benefit which will help you both quite a bit.

A warning though. If you are due to be migrated onto Universal Credit, (UC) you will then no longer be able to claim housing benefit, not until state pension age anyway. You will have to claim UC housing element instead which is only a fraction of what you will get on housing benefit.

COUNCIL TAX DISCOUNT

If you look on the back of your council tax bill you will see "Council Tax Explanatory Notes" Under that you will see

5) People With Disabilities

From there you can contact the council to see what your options are. I think that you certainly look as though you will qualify for a discount.

If you get it, whatever council tax band you're in, for instance B, you will pay for band A instead. If it's C you will only pay for B etc.

SEVERE DISABILITY PREMIUM AND CARER'S ALLOWANCE.

If you claiming ESA Support Group you should be able to get Severe Disability Premium (SDP) to go with your ADP, (I presume you live in Scotland) If not as you have your husband you could claim Carer's Allowance (CA) instead. You cannot claim both at the same time. Please note that if one of you becomes state pension age he will not be able to claim CA but you will be able to claim SDP anyway. It's only if you are on UC that you can't claim it.

PLEASE do be warned ⚠️ though about the CA that your husband can only claim up to £196 per week on the Carer's earning limit which is only the equivalent of 16 hours at minimum wage after tax and national insurance apparently.

If you go over that, it will affect the CA and even if your husband goes just one pound over, the government have the power to take that full weeks CA of £83.30 back off you in an overpayment, with a deverstating cumulative effect. 😱 Yes, really. Please be REALLY CAREFUL!!

As you can see, you are likely to be able to claim more money but your husbands full time earnings will affect CA and potentially the amount of housing benefit you may be able to get too.

As you can see it's an overly complicated minefield, hence the long message. I can give you some idea, which I hope will make you feel better about the situation but I urge you to check with an expert adviser. 👌

I strongly suggest that you contact Scope themselves as they offer comprehensive, expert advice about benefits.

Visit Scope.org/Menu/Advice

or by

Phone 0808 800 3333

Or

Email helpline@scope.org.uk

I really do hope that helps you and good luck to both you and your husband with the benefits and in particular, good luck 🤞 🍀to you with your forthcoming operation. 😊

Please let me know how you get on with the benefits situation. 👍

Best Wishes

Jul1aorways

Thank you @Holly_Scope for your kind words about the advice I gave to @JALANkin earlier today.

It's much appreciated!! 😊

Hi @JALANkin

You're very welcome to that. Thank you. 👍

It just struck me about all the uncertainty you face, trying to improve you and your husband's income and the overly complex and draconian benefit system you are going to have to tackle, all on top of you having to go into hospital for a major operation, followed by a long and painful recovery and knew that I wanted to offer some help to you.

I not only wanted to give you some practical advice and point you in the direction of getting expert advice but wanted to tell you about the pitfalls there are in the system, which if you fall foul of them, the consequences are truly deverstating. 😳

I've been disabled for 21 years and would hate to see anyone making completely unforeseen mistakes, through absolutely no fault of their own.

Finally I would like to give you some useful links for you to look into,if you choose.

The first is Benefits and Work who I have depended on for many years for their expert advice guides to give us the best possible chance to pass our disability assessments.

I cannot recommend them enough for this, they are invaluable. They have news and run campaigns too, on our behalf.

https://www.benefitsandwork.co.uk/

The second is Disabled People Against Cuts (DPAC) who also run The Disability News Service (DNS) who are excellent for protesting and campaigning against cuts like these.

Through them I am currently filling in a submission to the All Party Parliamentary Group about the effect of the proposed Green Paper cuts on myself and my partner at the moment.

https://dpac.uk.net/

Those are just possible suggestions for you. There are a lot more people supporting us than you probably think there is. There are many more besides.

I hope that will give you a lift at the moment, even if you think (quiet rightly) that you have too much on your plate at the moment, to deal with them.

Again, my very Best Wishes for the future for both of you.

Kind Regards

Jul1aorways 😊