no benefit due to not enough NI contributions???

donz_8

Hi all

desperate for advice, I fell ill in april 2007 and put a claim in for incapacity. i received a letter saying i was not allowed any money because i didnt have enough NI contributions but they will accumilate whilst i am off sick.

its now 2012 i am still off sick and still have no money from the dwp. does anybody know how many years of them giving NI credits before i can get any money.

this is really depressing me.if i was fit enough to work i would,so much.

thanks for reading
donz

pmlindyloo

I believe that these ni credits only go towards your entitlement towards your state pension and not for contribution based ESA. Hopefully someone else will confirm this.

I am presuming that you are not entitled to income based ESA because you have a partner who works?

Does your illness qualify you for DLA?

You can check that you are receiving all your entitlements by entering your details into the benefit checker on www.turn2us.org.uk.

murphy306

This happened to me about 2 years ago, they said they could not pay me Jobseekers. It was a long hard fight but in the end they paid it. However I was lucky I had kept all payslips and other details for the period they were questioning so they then had to pay up as THEIR records were wrong and for some reason were not updated correctly. Moral of the story never take their word for anything and never take no for an answer off them.

I know maybe your case is a bit different but Good luck with this

Mojisola

pmlindyloo wrote: »

I believe that these ni credits only go towards your entitlement towards your state pension and not for contribution based ESA.

This is right. You do not build up entitlement to benefits if you are not paying NI contributions. You may be getting credits towards your pension but it would be worth checking this.

As pmlindyloo said - if you are still ill, you should look at claiming DLA. That doesn't rely on NI contributions.

kaya64

are you self employed and earning less than £6000 per year, figure may be wrong , but its roughly that .
We are self employed and our income from the business went under £6000 per year so we no longer need to pay NIC , but we have paid some i think for around 18-20 years before the business got bad .

anguk

I may be completely wrong but doesn't it go by your NI contributions for the previous year or something like that? I'm trying to remember when my OH first claimed NI contributions, I'm sure they said something about the NI contributions for the previous tax year. I could be wrong because it was Incapacity Benefit back then.

p00hsticks

anguk wrote: »

I may be completely wrong but doesn't it go by your NI contributions for the previous year or something like that?

You're correct - I'm not sure if it's the same for IB/ESA as for Job Seekers Allowance, but for the latter I believe they look at the contributions made in the last two full tax years prior to the first week of the current year - so at present, they'll be looking at contributions made from 6th April 2009 to 5th April 2011.

However, as others have pointed out, NI credits received while you are registered for benefits don't count for the purposes of claiming contributions-based benefits - only for the state pension.

anguk

p00hsticks wrote: »

You're correct - I'm not sure if it's the same for IB/ESA as for Job Seekers Allowance, but for the latter I believe they look at the contributions made in the last two full tax years prior to the first week of the current year - so at present, they'll be looking at contributions made from 6th April 2009 to 5th April 2011.

However, as others have pointed out, NI credits received while you are registered for benefits don't count for the purposes of claiming contributions-based benefits - only for the state pension.

Thanks, I thought it was something like that but I'm going back to about1994 so my memory is a bit hazy. We were a bit worried because the previous year he'd been self employed and hadn't earned enough to pay NI so we didn't know if he would be able to get IB but I seem to remember them going by his NI contributions from 1991 to 1993 which was okay because he'd worked fulltime for an employer for 15 years and had paid full NI.

donz_8

thanks for all your replies, i did try DLA about 4 or 5 years ago.it got turned down basically because i could still walk and do some things and my symptoms are intermittent. didnt appeal as being knocked down by the dwp and DLA just wiped me out mentally.
thanks
Donna

McKneff

I believe they work on the last 2 full tax years re paying NI contributions.

Self employed can indeed claim ESA if they have paid NI contributions, I believe class 2 and class 4 contributions.
Or at least they could when my OH was a decorator around 10 years ago.

Bogof_Babe

What have you been living on for the last five years Donna?

Do you have a partner? Children?