selling up and in receipt of ESA

jacobsnannie

Can anyone help?? my husband is severely disabled and I am his full-time carer. We currently live in a 5 bed detached property for which we have the interest paid direct to our lender by the DWP. We really need to move to a bungalow. Does anyone know if we would be able to sell our current house and buy another (cheaper) house i.e. bungalow without it affecting the ESA payments made by the DWP.

Thanks

SuzieSue

As far as I know, it depends on the type of ESA that your husband is getting.

If he is the work-related group then his ESA will only last for a year.

If he is in the support group then his ESA should last indefinitely irrespective of any savings or investments that you have. However, there is no guarantee that this might not change in future years and that ESA will become dependent on savings.

However, if you need to move to a bungalow then you should.

Peter__2

AFAIK what SuzieSue says is correct only if he's on contributions based ESA. The fact that you say you get interest paid suggest that he's actually on income based ESA, which means the question is will you end up with savings (capital) left over from the move? If moving to a cheaper place just reduces your mortgage then I don't think that should affect your benefits (apart from a reduction in the contribution towards interest of course.)