Quick question - do I need to inform DWP of a closed bank account?

Hi ....

Basically I was on CBESA with a IR top up until around mid 2022 ..... I then voulterrilly moved to UC , where I was put on to new style ESA and lcwra

I knew I was going to make the change to UC around 6 months before and I knew that my account that my ESA went into would be no good in regards to receiving my UC as it was a savings account , ESA has no problem going into it but UC requires a debit card account ....

So I opened an account around 6 months before ....

So when I made the switch to UC , ESA knew of my account that my ESA had always gone into and UC now knew of my account my UC went into ..... I thought that because it was all DWP then each department would know of all accounts

So as it stood ESA was only aware of the account they paid my ESA / new style ESA into .... And UC were only aware of the account my UC was paid into .....

I remember distinctively that when I was filling in the online UC form it specifically only asked me for the account I wanted my UC paid in to 🤷

Anyway for three years I left it like that ....

But about a year ago I rang ESA and told them that I would like my ESA paid into the same account as my UC just to consolidate it onto one account and make it easier ......

They did this and it has been all good .....

So for the last year the ESA department have known of not only the old account that they paid my ESA into for years ( they've always known about that ) but they now know of the account my UC gets paid into aswell ..... The UC department still only knows of one , that being the account I gave them at the beginning of my UC claim .....

To be honest I would of thought if one department knew them they both would 🤷 ......

Anyway the thing is when I told ESA department to change payments into my UC account I never told them that I was closing the old one , I just told them to switch payments and left it like that .....

I was reading a post on here from December 2025 from a member called whistles who seemed to do the same thing and it led to UC telling him he had only told them of one account when they actually had two on file for him ( I did read on a earlier post something about the council ) it seems that people on housing Benifit seem to have all there details and accounts known of more than someone who doesn't ..... Anyway he had a compliance interview because of it and they said they had reason to believe he had over 6000 a few years back ...... ( Which does make me think that the compliance interview was triggered by that and not the fact they had found another account for him because he never told them that it was closed ) But I'm not sure ..... Either way I find myself in the situation where I haven't told ESA that the account is closed , they have it as they paid into it for years but they don't pay onto it anymore , but because I never told them it was closed it's probably still shows as active and it's just sitting on there system as active ....

I definitely don't want to inform DWP of this as it could cause a big fuss , I was just thinking should I just ring ESA and say that I rung up to change my bank details around a year ago and the old account you would still have for me that you paid my ESA into for many years probably still shows as active , but it's now actually closed