Income support backdated pay - are they with-holding it from me?

tayler_remi

To cut a long story short... I am a student with a disability, therefore on the 2nd October I applied for income support. The woman on the phone told me that a) it would take two weeks to process and b) I would be able to get my claim backdated up to 3 months before the claim until I got my first payment.

First of all, it took just over 2 MONTHS for my first payment to come through, they sent me form after form after form which I signed and sent off straight away every time.

Now, I am extremely pleased that my fortnightly payments are now sorted however I rang JobCentre Plus last week, asked them when the backdated pay would be through and they said to give it a few days and ring back, so a few days ago I did. They told me there was no sign of any mention of any backdated pay on the system etc.

So, what do I do? This is my money and I know I am entitled to it; we're talking £50 a week here so that's a backdated pay of roughly £1000. I desperately need this money to pay off some debt etc, so I need to do something about it.

Thanks!

Macro_3

Income support can be backdated by up to three months if you requested it, show good reason for the delay in claiming and meet the conditions of entitlement for the period of the backdate - so my questions are, did you specifically request that your claim be backdated and did you give good reasons for requesting it?

If you did request it, have they responded and said that your backdate has been granted (and you're just waiting for payment) or are you still waiting for a decision?

tayler_remi

I told them I didn't apply earlier because I was in hospital/sick, which I was.

tayler_remi

I requested it on the phone when I applied, but when I asked if a decision had been made, they said there was no signs of the system of a request.

tayler_remi

Maybe I'll do that. Thankyou, feeling a bit better now!

dookar

tayler_remi wrote: »

I requested it on the phone when I applied, but when I asked if a decision had been made, they said there was no signs of the system of a request.

When you did that, did they ask questions about the reason for the delay, how you could find out you can claim and stuff?

If so, it should be on the system somewhere