LCWRA confusion

laterotheparty
laterotheparty Online Community Member Posts: 2 Listener
in Benefits and income

hi, I hope to keep this succinct as I know there’s many existing posts around this topic.

I just wanted to know if there was any particular situation whereby LCWRA was awarded and the date of the assessment was used as the start date for the ‘relevant period’ 3 full assessment periods before payments commenced.

The reason I ask is that, I cannot see anything on the governments DWP site or in fact the internet that would suggest such a scenario exists.

My understanding is that if I’m an existing Universal credit claimant and I’ve submitted continued fit notes with no gaps in the dates reported for those fitnotes on my journal, that LCWRA is backdated to the start of the 4th reporting period after the date of my first fitnote.

My timeline is:

July 23rd 2025 - UC claim starts and first fitnote provided.
November 25th 2025 - WCA takes place via telephone.
January 19th 2026 - LCWRA awarded via journal letter
January 29th 2026 - letter in journal saying work earnings allowance was being applied to my past Universal credit payments and adjusted so they owed me a recalculated payment for Nov-Dec assessment period and any payment would include other assessment periods that this was applicable to.

Then I was subsequently told by someone on my journal that no back payment of LCWRA would be made and my first payment would be for the period 23rd March 2026 to 22nd April 2026.

None of that makes any cohesive sense.

I’ve asked for an MR regarding the dates awarded from as Ive provided continuous fitnotes with no gaps since July.

I’m not going mad here am I??

Comments

  • Kimi87
    Kimi87 Online Community Member Posts: 8,568 Championing

    Unfortunately UC Journal staff offen give incorrect advice.

    For Fit Notes it is the date they are given to UC that counts, not the start date written on them.

  • laterotheparty
    laterotheparty Online Community Member Posts: 2 Listener
    https://forum.scope.org.uk/discussion/comment/1106493#Comment_1106493

    I find that hard to believe. But I do believe that unfortunately people in forums often give incorrect advise too.

    So you’re saying that you need to visit your gp on or before the date your previous fit note expired and get a new fit note and report that fitnote on your journal the same day.
    what if you don’t have a gp appointment until a few days after your previous fitnote expired? Do you then report a fit note to uc when you don’t actually have the fit note just to keep the date reported to uc consecutive? Isn’t that fraudulently reporting a fit note before you are in possession of one??????


    if you are able to point me in the direction of any legislation that states fit notes must be reported on your journal consecutively even if you don’t actually have a fit note from your gp yet, I’d be very much interested in seeing that.

  • SheffieldMan1976
    SheffieldMan1976 Posts: 637 Connected

    Unfortunately the DWP is run by incompetent people who clearly don't what they're doing IMO.

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