75,000 ESA Claimants UnderpaUnderpaid

Seems to apply to those claimants who moved from IB to ESA.
So, I guess, it may relate to the incorrect calculation of transitional protection.

According to BBC News the average error amounts to £7,000 per claimant!
Doesn't bode well for UC managed transitional protection under an even more slimmed down DWP.

Interesting... I did wonder and I did scan unsuccessfully to see if I could find out. In my mind given the big figures the BBC were talking about as averages over a small number of years I was taking a punt that seems to be right. So Enhanced and/or Severe disability premiums not applied when they should have been for those who qualified. It seems the matter indeed was recognised back in 2014 but finally the DWP are catching up under pressure to look into it. Quite a bungle... even by DWP standards.


Cue the next issue... backdated monies awarded and rules on capital to eventually consider.

venison wrote: »

Reading the article it seems that the DWP themselves identified the errors and is working their way through claims to ensure they are being paid correctly, although it also seems this is happening very slowly.
I would suggest that anyone who thinks they are being underpaid looks up on the internet to see what the current rates of ESA are.

Nonsense, welfare rights advisors have been raising this issue for several years. Don't ever rely on BBC journos to report govt negligence honestly. If anyone only skimmed the article they'd think it was a Labour govt at fault, them being mentioned twice, the coalition once and the Tories not at all!

To add to the issue with some claims they are trying to limit the time of backdating. I'll explain further later if no one else does beforehand.

There are thousands of cases being overpaid and thousands being underpaid. The DWP has a department that is trying to deal with these cases. They do scans of all claimants and throw up all the cases that might have errors. They do this for combinations of benefits such as

State Pension / ESA
State Pension / CA
DLA / ESA
DLA / CA
PIP / CA
PIP / ESA
PIP / JSA
CA / ESA
Claimants or partners in prison is another type.

etc etc etc etc

These results come up with either overpayment or underpayment or neither.

The errors above are not linked to IB Migration
I don't know if they have an IB Migration scan but it would be difficult to make one for conts Vs IR as the computer does not know if IR was assessed at migration or not.

Previously mentioned on this thread, nellie...said EDP not being paid on migration.

If someone had DLA, IS & IB and had EDP then ESA should be Income Related and EDP should be there. The only way EDP could not be there is if it was migrated only as conts and did not include the IR, Or the TA was input but the DLA was not, there is already a scan for such cases DLA/ESA

If someone had only SDA or IB then there would be no automatic EDP on ESA because only comes with ESA(IR). But DWP should have sent an ESA3 at migration to check for eligibility. If an ESA3 was not sent then if claimant asks for an ESA3 5 years later the DWP will backdate the ESA IR those 5 years, if there is no evidence an ESA3 was sent at migration.

If someone is already on ESA IR and is entitled to be paid EDP by virtue of Support Group...then the EDP is paid automatically by the computer, so it cannot ever be missing from the claim.

If someone is paid ESA(IR) and is not in the Support Group, but they have DLA HRC or PIPCE but the disability benefit is not known to ESA then EDP is not being paid. When ESA is made aware either through a scan or by the claimant then EDP arrears will be paid.

What exactly the 75,000 claimants figure relates to I don't know, but it could include all of the current scans that the DWP has for the above

i.e. the 75,000 could just be all the current outstanding scans including all the benefit combinations that they do and all the prisoners, and some are under and some are over and some are neither.

The article, however, just says "wrongly calculated" which could be under or over
The article also is quite specific dates 2011 - 2015 , the scans I talk about are not limited to any years and can be new errors that have occured last month.
The DWP have had this error scanning team for a lot longer than since 2016 at least 15 years possibly 25 years. If the DWP only became aware in 2016 of these 75,000 it could have been as result of a scan. But the department is aware of many thousands of other errors as well as these then.


The article is actually useless because it does not give an example of what error or errors they are talking about. Can't people ask the BBC for more explanation? I'm not going to but I thought there was a comments section at the bottom of the news pages.

I love the token benefit claimant who has been told of underpayments, but maybe not told of overpayments, and who does not know if he himself has been wrongly paid.