Savings over £6000 awaiting outcome

That sounds promising regarding the council. 🙂

For the DWP, it's not possible to make a payment before the full amount has been calculated. The debt team won't have a case open for it to be paid into yet.

Paying off debt is allowed on UC. So once you've got the letter with the full repayment amount on it, you can pay off the full amount without that being classed as deprivation of capital.

Then just put your new savings amount into the UC journal. UC will probably ask to see proof of the new savings amount, especially if it's gone below £6000, so you will need to provide them with current bank statements if they ask. UC do allow PDF statements from online banking to be sent through the journal in most cases, so that is easier than having to print and send paper copies for ESA & HB.

That's great, you're very welcome!

Most of my knowledge comes from reading on here over the past 5 years, as well as my own experiences.

When I said the whole lot, I meant all of the ESA payment for each week that you were over £16000. Because you had a dual claim, it is only the income related part that could have been overpaid, not the contributions based part. ESA letters are generally difficult to decipher, but if you've got an old one to hand, you might be able to work out how much was income related in your case.

Just as a rough example, if you were getting around £250 a week, you might find that only £50 of that was income based. So the 'whole lot' would only be £50 a week instead of £250 a week in this example.

It would have been a dual claim before as well. It is only dual ESA claims that migrate to dual UC claims. Many people don't realise they were on a dual ESA claim until they migrate because the ESA letters don't state it clearly.

The £6864 would be reduced slightly if they do stop the payments for 6 months. That is based on payment deductions - and there can't be a deduction if there isn't a payment! So that would be around £1000 less. (£5800). If we say £200 a week income-related for 6 months, that works out as an additional £5,200 on top. But please don't stress about that until you hear back from ESA. As that is a fairly meaningless figure without knowing exactly how much was income related each week.

I've never chased them. I can't use phones and they don't have an online system so ESA is totally uncontactable for me. That is the reason I never updated the savings with them in the first place.

I can't think of anyone on here who has had a savings case dealt with quickly.