How does UC deal with ESA income?

Slonvinton
Slonvinton Community Member Posts: 120 Empowering
edited October 4 in Universal Credit (UC)

I know I can disregard Income when declaring capital for UC.

The examples the DWP give for this in official guidelines seem to say different things. The Pearl example seems wrong to me as she doesnt appear to be able to disregard income at all. But even using the other example its not at all clear how Income is worked out, or how much of it has been spent it worked out.

ADM Chapter 1

Screenshot 2026-10-04 at 05-13-24 ADM Chapter H1 Capital - adm-ch-h1.pdf.png

The other example involves a Katie:
https://www.gov.uk/guidance/universal-credit-money-savings-and-investments#income

image.png


So these two examples certainly confuse the issue- state the same rule and give different outcomes.

But even if you take one and go with that you are still left wondering about the unspent aspect of it. If Capital is a bucket does income float on savings or does savings float on income. Ive been assuming income floats on savings, because thats the safest option.

With the ESA I had only been claiming the last ESA payment as income- regardless of how much of the previous payment I had left unspent. Often I only get the ESA payment a day before I have to declare my UC.
Im not sure if what I have been doing is correct or if Im deducting too little income- I did it this way because the rules are unclear and it seemed the safest option.

Can anyone explain if I should be deducting both ESA payments (assuming unspent- and any details they have on how unspent is calculated).

ALSO
Does anyone know if the fact Im on a joint ESA-UC claim protects the LCWRA status, at its current amount, if I go over 16K at any point?

Ive read some stuff online about this which seems o imply the date of the joint assessment can lock it in…. but Im not sure which type of ESA it is really referring to (it could be talking about the migration from Income based ESA which is not what I get Im on new style contribution based ESA so no migration yet)

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Comments

  • Kimi87
    Kimi87 Community Member Posts: 9,102 Championing
    edited October 4

    The migration to UC is now complete. New Style ESA is not one of the 6 income based benefits that was migrated.

    So it's talking about New Style ESA. Capital of over £16k means your claim would end. There is no entitlement to UC over £16k. No element is protected.

    If you later qualified again to reclaim then due to the active ESA award you get LCWRA automatically and at the higher rate.

    With what counts as income to deduct, I said recently because ESA is paid fortnightly, one payment (£291.80) should be deducted. But I had a UC claim review this week and my reviewer deducted 2 x ESA payments to calculate my capital.

    It's very hard to calculate in the next AP what is unspent from a particular payment, especially if you get multiple benefits.

    For simplicity I deduct the relevant most recent payment from my capital calculation in each AP.

  • OverlyAnxious
    OverlyAnxious Community Member Posts: 6,430 Championing

    "With what counts as income to deduct, I said recently because ESA is paid fortnightly, one payment (£291.80) should be deducted. But I had a UC claim review this week and my reviewer deducted 2 x ESA payments to calculate my capital."

    How on earth are we meant to get the savings declarations correct when even the review staff keep doing them differently! 😑

  • Autumnleaf
    Autumnleaf Community Member Posts: 1,105 Empowering

    https://forum.scope.org.uk/discussion/comment/1151958#Comment_1151958

    Hi. How do you declare capital? I am told to put in amount in each bank/savings account and UC keep saying I should deduct stuff like Cost Of Living (COL) disregards. But would they call it lying if I gave a wrong amount in my account? I am having endless trouble about this and have made 3 journal queries but they don't answer.

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