Help with ESA
hadleigh1970
Online Community Member Posts: 13 Listener
Hi my name is Hadleigh, I moved back to my parents house on the 6th November 2017 so I had to make a new claim for ESA and tried to get housing benefit to help with my parents rent. Firstborn was told I couldn't claim because I was a non-dependent. I went into local council office and was told I needed to be put on the tenancy agreement so I did and sent it off. Months of messing around and then they said why have you sent this in? Nobody could find my application and was asked to do it again. This was in June 2018.
Previous to this mg ESA claim was finalised after a medical and I was getting £366.20 A fortnight and £433.10 monthly pip! So ok.
I filled in all they wanted again from housing benefit went into local office brought in I'd, bank accounts etc all sent off. Waiting for it to go through and back dated to the 6th November I get a letter sorry Shropshire has now moved to universal credit so you will have to do a new claim. Arrrhhhhh! Ok so I do all this. They will not back date housing to 6th November, they're only paying £158 out of £237.50 rent and I get £200.98 less per month on universal credit than I got 9n ESA!???? And the £80 less rent I am £281 worse off on universal credit!??? How is this possible. I had my drug help worker ring them to ask why and they couldn't tell her and was advised to go to the citizens advice bureau. This is ridiculous I've written in my journal asking about it and it's no 12 days for a reply. Plus the other 50 times I have wrote in my journal. Any help because seriously I have felt suicidal
Previous to this mg ESA claim was finalised after a medical and I was getting £366.20 A fortnight and £433.10 monthly pip! So ok.
I filled in all they wanted again from housing benefit went into local office brought in I'd, bank accounts etc all sent off. Waiting for it to go through and back dated to the 6th November I get a letter sorry Shropshire has now moved to universal credit so you will have to do a new claim. Arrrhhhhh! Ok so I do all this. They will not back date housing to 6th November, they're only paying £158 out of £237.50 rent and I get £200.98 less per month on universal credit than I got 9n ESA!???? And the £80 less rent I am £281 worse off on universal credit!??? How is this possible. I had my drug help worker ring them to ask why and they couldn't tell her and was advised to go to the citizens advice bureau. This is ridiculous I've written in my journal asking about it and it's no 12 days for a reply. Plus the other 50 times I have wrote in my journal. Any help because seriously I have felt suicidal
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Comments
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Hi @hadleigh1970
Welcome to the community! I'm sorry to hear about your stressful situation. Unfortunately I don't know what advice to give you right now however members of the community may be able to give you advice and tips on what to do
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Thank you, yeah I'm stuck myself. As far as rent is concerned they have it down I live in a 2 bed so pay bedroom tax, but my parents live in that so it's not spare as it's a shared house where in pay half the rent! The guy at UC didn't know!? And as far as getting £201 less each month is disgusting. I'm physically disabled and mentally ill and for the long hual, no chance of getting work so the money I used to get made up a little for not having the ability to get a good job, or promotion, buy my own house etc. I feel sick to the stomach this last couple of months about it and it seems they've got it all online now to make their lives really easy. I e been waiting 12 days for a reply. Other replies I've had a couple of line. No one seems to care. I've got to ring the citizens advice bureau in now to try and find out why it's so much less money. Why can't someone at UC tell me why. I've had to go back to the council to try and claim the back rent0
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Hi @hadleigh1970 and a very warm welcome to the community. I am really sorry to hear about this and I hope the community is able to help in some way! If you are feeling really low then please do reach out to organisations like the Samaritans. If there is anything else that we can do then please do not hesitate to ask!
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Hi,
Firstly I see when you were claiming ESA that amount included the severe disability premium (SDP) as you went to live with your parents do they both claim either PIP daily living, DLA mid or high rate care or attendance allowance?
Secondly, for LHA you will only be entitled to the 1 bedroom rate, anything more than this and you have to pay the difference.
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Hi, No I wasn't claiming severe disability allowance and my parents are both pensioners and can't claim carers allowance because of that. LHA isn't the problem I live with my parents and I pay half the rent which is £237.50, they pay me £158.30 saying I pay bedroom tax for the spare bedroom, but it's not spare as my parents live in it as a shared household. I was only claiming ESA and pip. Nothing else ESA was £366.20 a fortnight =£732.40 for 28 days. UC is paying £616 I think for 31 days. So losing a months money each year. Is anyone else experiencing these dramatic decreases in money??? It's just not right and I have to go to citizens advice bureau to find out why. What are they doing at UC not to be able to tell me0
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£366 every fortnight isn't the ESA amount. Were you claiming as a single person? If so then ESA is £127.15 per week single person Income Related support Group amount. I'm not sure why you were claiming that much every 2 weeks. With SDP added on you would have got an extra £64.30 per week, making it £191.45 per week. Your figures for ESA don't make any sense.
When you transferred to UC did they honour your ESA award and place you in the equivalent group LCWRA (support Group) If they did then you should be claiming £317.82 per month single person over the age of 25 and LCWRA element (support Group equivalent) of £328.32 per month? This is a total of £646.14 for those 2. You need to check your online UC account to see exactly what it is you're claiming. Something tells me that they aren't paying you the LCWRA element because they haven't honoured your ESA award when you transferred across. This happens to a lot of people.
On top of this you should also receive the housing element, however much that is for your circumstances but to get this you need to hand in a copy of the tenancy agreement.
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Is it social housing or privately rented?0
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Yeah sorry I've just looked I was getting severe disability premium.
Yeah I filled in the UC which I'm not very good at. I was getting £188.00 weekly. There were £26.57 coming out for deductions.
What can I do now???0 -
Even if you didn't have to claim UC and were able to stay on ESA you wouldn't be entitled to claim SDP living with your parents unless they both claimed a qualifying benefit too, as I mentioned above. One of the criteria for SDP is that you live alone, or classed as living alone and no one claims carers allowance for you. If you did continue to claim the SDP after you moved in with your parents then you should have reported the changes in circumstances because you weren't entitled to SDP at that point.0
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You also need to check your UC amount to see if they have added the LCWRA of £328 per month, if they haven't then this could be why your money is even less.0
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They knew I was living with my parents so. I don't know0
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Yes you were getting the SDP but as I stated you wouldn't be entitled to that anymore even if you were still claiming ESA because you live with your parents and wouldn't qualify. Were you living with your parents when you first claimed the ESA and were awarded SDP?0
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Yes I was and they were told I was living with them and they were pensioners0
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I was down as living in a shared house where I paid half the rent and no one claimed carers allowance for me0
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Ah I see, the reason your money is less now because the disability premiums aren't paid with UC. There will be changes to this sometime during the autumn where those that had to change to UC because of a change of circumstances lost their SDP. When the changes do take place those that lost out because of moving to UC will get backdated money for what they lost out on. Unfortunately, until that announcement is made and DWP look through all the claims then you'll have to wait and there's nothing you can do in the meantime. Once the announcement is made and the plans are in place it will take quite some time to go through all the claims.0
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Ok well if someone at UC could have explained this to me instead of telling me to go to the citizens advice bureau then at least I would have know. Thank you ever so much for helping me out.0
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Not a problem at all. It took a while but we got there in the end. Hopefully It won't be too long before the announcement is made.0
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