ESA help please

dvds2000

Hiya

Hope someone can help with this quick query

My sister's partner has just been awarded ESA after going to a tribunal, and has been awarded £25,000 going back to 2009 as a lump sum, and obviously weekly ESA from now on. This is income related ESA not contribution related.

Does anyone know if, now she has £25k in the bank, she will be disqualified from the other benefits she's getting, Housing Benefit, Council Tax Benefit, and a student grant (she is a full time student, he isn't).

From what I've read income related ESA automatically qualifies for full HB/CTB, but obviously she now has over £16k in the bank. Will they count that as savings or as being income over the past 3 and a bit years?

Anyone any idea, thanks in advance for the help

epitome

I have just looked at the rules for JSA compensatory payments....because I had those on hand....I imagine Housing Benefit & ESA will be very similar
Are they getting ESA Conts or IR?

Anyway for JSA the payment will be disregarded for 52weeks,
They need to be careful though about spending the money, there may be restrictions on what they can spend it on....answer these questions and then we'll take it from there....

Have they been borrowing any of the money all this time which needs to be paid back? If not how have they been supporting themselves?

pmlindyloo

I have been reading on the BenefitsNow website (google capital disregard for ESA - sorry can't post a link at the moment) and it says that arrears of ESA are disregarded for 52 weeks or if they are receiving ESA then the arrears will be disregarded for the period of the award.
Can someone check this and clarify what this means? Could be very important for the OP.

ineed

pmlindyloo wrote: »

I have been reading on the BenefitsNow website (google capital disregard for ESA - sorry can't post a link at the moment) and it says that arrears of ESA are disregarded for 52 weeks or if they are receiving ESA then the arrears will be disregarded for the period of the award.
Can someone check this and clarify what this means? Could be very important for the OP.

Did you mean this page? It seems that it's 52 weeks as you say for ESA.

pmlindyloo

ineed wrote: »

Did you mean this page? It seems that it's 52 weeks as you say for ESA.

Thank you.

The part I am talking about is directly below. It says:

Arrears and concessionary payments of £5000 or more with regard to any of the above benefits are disregarded for 52 weeks from when the payment was made or, for those already receiving income related ESA, the payment is disregarded for the remaining period of the award.

I read it as the arrears are disregarded as long as they continue to be entitled to income based ESA.

Happy to be corrected.

princessdon

25K in 3 years! That is disgusting that they left you with zero money - how on earth did they survive?

epitome

pmlindyloo wrote: »

Thank you.

The part I am talking about is directly below. It says:

Arrears and concessionary payments of £5000 or more with regard to any of the above benefits are disregarded for 52 weeks from when the payment was made or, for those already receiving income related ESA, the payment is disregarded for the remaining period of the award.

I read it as the arrears are disregarded as long as they continue to be entitled to income based ESA.

Happy to be corrected.

Hi very well done finding this, if the OP comes back maybe they can answer my two questions. If it is ESA IR then the award will be disregarded for the life of the claim.

However the linked guidance only applies to capital disregarded for ESA.

The OP asked about how it would affect their Housing Benefit & CTB.

We are yet to answer that question directly but at least we know it will not affect their ESA.