ESA To UC - Managed Migration

Does your ESA include the Severe disability Premium? If it does then I'd advise you wait until the last minute to claim UC because you have 3 months to do that. When I receive my letter, I won't be in any rush to claim it due to receiving the SDP with my ESA.

To answer your questions…

Once you submit your claim for UC Income Related ESA and housing benefit will both continue for 2 weeks so yes you will receive both of those payments.

After that both of them will end. Help with the rent will be paid in with your UC known as housing element, unless you're either living in supported or temporary housing and then it will continue with housing benefit.

Housing element of UC is paid at the same time as your UC payment, which is once a month. If you claim UC on 24th December this will be the start of your assessment periods, which last for 1 calendar month. This means your assessment periods will be 24th to 23rd of every month and payment will be 30th of every month, unless payment date falls on a weekend or a bank holiday and then you'll receive your payment on the last working day before.

Due to the 2 week run on of ESA and HB this means you'll be just under 3 weeks without money. You can request an advance payment for UC but this does need to be repaid back and your future UC payments will be reduced.

If any part of your ESA is contributions based, this will automatically revert to New Style ESA but it will be deducted in full from any UC entitlement. Your ESA payments will be £276.40/fortnight. The amount deducted from UC will be £598.86/month. It seems more is deducted that what you receive but that's not correct. ESA is a weekly benefit and UC is monthly and there's 4.3 weeks in a month, not 4 weeks.

I hope this helps.

Also - does the esa award letter state whether you qualify for sdp (hence when filling in the online form is it better to upload a photo of it as proof?) Is it not automatically known online that sdp was awarded?

Thank you so much for your help :)

As they've now updated the system to recognise when someone migrates to UC from ESA it shouldn't take a few weeks for your claim to be updated and they shouldn't be asked you to provide any fit notes now, like they used to to before.

Due to the erosion of the Transitional Protection I would leave claiming UC until as late as possible, as long as you claim by the date in the letter then it will be fine. Even on that date will be fine.

You will not need to send them photos of anything as proof. They will receive all the information they need from ESA.

The reason is because your ESA includes the SDP, if it was me ( and I claim the SDP too) then I will be waiting until the last minute before claiming UC. Transitional Protection will be included with your UC but that does erode overtime so eventually, you'll be receiving the same amount of money as someone that doesn't receive the SDP.

Housing benefit continues for 2 weeks once you submit the claim for UC so yes you'll receive that payment on 30th December.

Thank you to both poppy and Kimmy 🙏. I am grateful that you both have the answers for everyone on the forum! I'm grateful for your knowledgeable post💝

No, as I said the resident (that is the person receiving the care) has to be getting a qualifying benefit.

The erosion isnt a week by week or month by month thing, the most likely cause of erosion will be annual benefit inflation uplifts. It can also be caused if any part of your UC gets an increase in entitlement.

In my case not all of my UC is subject to annual uplifting, it includes LHA which is frozen for 2025, so only the non LHA and non TP portion of the payment will be uplifted next April. The TP will be decreased by that same amount.

It has been announced at 4.1% for the uprate next year. Which for me works out at roughly £55 a month if I did the maths right, about 1/4 of my TP. This will accelerate in future years if LHA ever gets uprated (as my housing costs are not fully covered) or inflation increases.

I didnt delay, as I got the letter back in early November, so unless there was a unforeseen delay on my migration it still would have completed before April. If its done on the date of your first statement instead of the date of the claim, then waiting for the 3 months now I think could get you over the line for keeping more of the SDP for an extra year?

My early migration will be more than £55 a week, because it was also too early for me to get a HB uplift before the migration, which would have covered my entire rent and then transferred over as extra TP.

The 12 months Transitional Protection applies to those migrating from Tax credits that have more than £16,000 in capital. For everyone else TP lasts for as long as it lasts. For some it will be longer than others, it depends on circumstances.

If you want to migrate as soon as possible then that’s your decision. The reason I will be waiting is because I want my income to remain at this amount for as long as I can. When you migrate your benefits are frozen and will remain at that level until TP erodes completely.