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MIP and Income related ESA
RSISolutions
Member Posts: 113 Courageous
I am receiving mortgage interest payments and I am on Income related ESA.
I am aware that you must declare any savings between £6,000 and £16,000 on IR ESA. However, do these savings affect MIP?
I am aware that you must declare any savings between £6,000 and £16,000 on IR ESA. However, do these savings affect MIP?
Replies
Yes they do, it's part of the whole benefit.
Have you been contacted by the DWP yet about the changes to SMI in April 2018? The benefit is changing to Loans for Mortgage Interest.
There's some other discussions to look at
https://community.scope.org.uk/discussion/34613/sim-changes
https://community.scope.org.uk/discussion/33816/the-change-from-smi-benefit-to-a-loan#latest
Best wishes
Debbie
So if I have £16,000 of savings (as an example), anything over £600 is taken into account. So that's £10,000 worth of savings to look at.
They deduct £1 from my benefit for each £250 worth of savings over £6,000. So £10,000 divided by £250 is £40, to deduct from my benefit. Since my income related ESA is £102 - they deduct £40 from that which leaves me with £62 of benefit.
So how does this affect my mortgage interest payments?
It's almost impossible to give you a definitive answer unfortunately, not without knowing more about your situation. The answer may lie in the Decision Maker's Guidance- Chapter 44 or in the legislation itself. It's very complicated though. There's been so many changes to the rules over the years and this makes it much more difficult to give you an answer on this one.
Some capital can be disregarded too so there's more to this query than just the straightforward question of how the capital will affect the SMI.
I will look into this some more and if I find anything that might help, I'll let you know. I'm really sorry that I can't be more specific.
Best wishes
Debbie