UC managed migration guide

This is even more complicated than ESA unfortunately…

All councils have their own savings limits. Some have a hard cut off. And some have a tapered deduction before a hard cut off. In my area, it was a hard cut off at £10,000. But no deduction between £6,000 & £10,000. I have seen other councils use £6,000, £10,000 and £16,000. So you would have to check with your council to see what their savings limits are for Housing Benefit. If you get Council Tax Reduction, then you will keep getting that from the council after migrating to UC, so should check what the council limits are as they might be £6000 in your area.

So I may have to pay housing benefit back too 😭 this is too much

I been there 15 years and my rent now is £115 a week

It's unlikely that Housing Benefit would get notified of savings so I'd just leave that in the past. The main concern now is whether you're still allowed Council Tax Reduction in future with more than £6000 in savings. That is the one that needs to be checked really. Perhaps your adviser can help with that next time you contact them.

If you've got more than £6000 in savings. You can easily cover a small lump sum repayment if that does happen. It's really not a big issue. 🙂

The £50 fine is on top of any repayments. ESA is not connected to UC in any way, that is why ESA cannot take money out of your UC payments in future.

The deduction for ESA is £1 per week for every £250 over £6000. That works out almost exactly the same as the UC deduction which is £4.35 per month for every £250 over £6000. If you're expecting to lose around £17 a month on UC then you must have around £7000 in savings right now.

So it could be thousands if it's up to most I had 3 years ago at £1 a week, could take years.

Ok the mandatory consideration don't count that's good.

Sorry just at hospital with my mum. I appreciate all your help.My anxiety is terrible 😔

Thanks for your words. Yes it's crippling from morning untill night

My advisor says I won't need to pay anything back so wonder why here I'm told I will.

£1 a week take ages and if can't pay it out of UC then where would it come from. A pound a week out of my bank account

If we average that to £7000 over 4 years, the total repayment now would be £832. Plus the £50 fine.

If you have £6500 in savings then you can easily pay £882 from that. And that would even reduce your savings for UC, so you would get the full UC instead of being deducted £17 a month.

It is impossible for us to calculate the ESA overpayments on here as we would have to go through every bank statement for that 4 years.

I am sorry I mentioned it at all now. I thought I was doing the right thing by helping you prepare mentally in case it happens rather than getting an ESA letter out of the blue and panicking about it. But in hindsight I think you're much better off just forgetting about the ESA for now and focussing on the UC and your Mum instead. I wasn't aware of your Mum being in hospital when I first mentioned it.