Letter Received from ESA - I'm Confused & They're Not open - Help!

saintscouple

Hello,

Hopefully someone out there will be able to explain to me the letter i received this morning from the ESA.
It's a change of circumstances letter (which i haven't informed them of any) and i can't work out if they are going to continue paying me or not?
I'm currently in assessment phase with a medical booked for next week.

The letter goes like this -

We have looked at your claim again following a recent change.

From 26 Sept your ESA will be £64.30 a week.

You are not getting anymore ESA.

We cannot pay you because you have as much or more money coming in than the law says you need to live on.

Your partner may be required to attend a work focused interview with a personal advisor once you have been claiming benefit for more than 26 weeks.

Attached sheet shows how we worked out your money -

.......................

Your ESA is £130.45 less £244.71
So you would have been entitled to £0.00
However because you are entitled to contribution based ESA we will pay you £64.30.

The amounts on this page apply from 26 September.

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I hope you can see my confusion, on one page they're telling me that i have enough money to live on so don't qualify for an ESA payment, yet on the amounts sheet they say i will still be getting my payment.

They also talk about my partner (my wife actually) who has a cleaning job, so why they mention about her going to a work focused interview i don't know.

Please can someone make head or tail out of this for me.
They're not open to talk to today, in fact i only spoke to them yesterday on a different matter and they didn't say anything about this, and they confirmed my current medical certificate expires in Feb.

I just need to know are my payments stopping or not?

I'm worried sick and don't understand what they are trying to tell me.

Thanks

stazi

You are entitled to ESA Cont only-
"However because you are entitled to contribution based ESA we will pay you £64.30".

saintscouple

Thank you, i think you are right.
I only just realised this after writing it all down - i guess that helps sometime.

So there are 2 types of ESA - Income related and contribution related.
They are telling me i don't qualify for income related but do qualify for contribution related, therefore payment will be made to me the same as before, hence no change?

Garlicbread

That's right saintscouple. You are entitled to the contributions side of ESA presumably because you were previously in work and have paid enough national insurance to qualify in this way.

Don't worry - things don't always seem that clear in their letters and you're right sometimes it helps to write it all down.