"the amount the law says you need to live on.."

nannytone_2

its only replacing income based benefits. conts based ESA and JSA will still be paid.
danctions on ESA on last for as long as the claimant refuses to comply. once they start attending the wfi, the benefit will start again. and its only the extra componant that is sanctioned, they will still have the basic £71.

it all depends how fairly they hand out sanctions. i think people should expect to accept 'reasonable' requests that could help them back into work.
i want to work, and i struggle to get to see my advisor, but thats because he doesnt know what to do with me. i havent seen him since the beginning of october

osdset

nannytone wrote: »

its only replacing income based benefits. conts based ESA and JSA will still be paid.
danctions on ESA on last for as long as the claimant refuses to comply. once they start attending the wfi, the benefit will start again. and its only the extra componant that is sanctioned, they will still have the basic £71.

it all depends how fairly they hand out sanctions. i think people should expect to accept 'reasonable' requests that could help them back into work.
i want to work, and i struggle to get to see my advisor, but thats because he doesnt know what to do with me. i havent seen him since the beginning of october

No longer true, from 03/12/12 Under the new rules ESA claimants in the WRAG who fail to comply with the conditions for receiving benefit will receive an open ended sanction, followed by a fixed period sanction when they re-comply. The fixed period sanction will be one week for a first failure, two weeks for a second failure and four weeks for a third and subsequent failures in a 52 week period.

Claimants who are sanctioned will lose all of their personal allowance, but their work related activity component will not be affected.
Source http://www.dwp.gov.uk/adviser/updates/esa-sanction-changes/

sandraroffey

only just seen this thread so i havent read through all the postings.

not sure about the situation with ESA, but in a lot of cases, DLA is ignored as income. OP should check on that. i know that my DLA is NOT counted against my pension credit, nor is it counted against my housing benefit. but i am over 65 so that may make a difference.

helentay_2

nannytone wrote: »

its only replacing income based benefits. conts based ESA and JSA will still be paid.
danctions on ESA on last for as long as the claimant refuses to comply. once they start attending the wfi, the benefit will start again. and its only the extra componant that is sanctioned, they will still have the basic £71.

it all depends how fairly they hand out sanctions. i think people should expect to accept 'reasonable' requests that could help them back into work.
i want to work, and i struggle to get to see my advisor, but thats because he doesnt know what to do with me. i havent seen him since the beginning of october

Yes I am aware of that, but dad is intent on closing down his contributory ESA claim because he is fed up to the back teeth with having to keep proving his inability to work. The evidence of this doesn't change for the better he gets worse as time goes on, but it appears that the DWP don't see it that way.

He is intending to claim Pension Credit/Carers Allowance/UC.

To bump up his money he will have to sign on if he decides to hold fire on the Pension Credit claim and wait for UC to come into force as he is younger then mum by 6 years and won't be 65 until June 2014. He will have lost his right to a contributory benefit when he closes his ESA claim as he hasn't worked for the past 3 years.

His obvious other risk at the moment is if he did claim Pension Credit he would more than likely lose the diability premium because he has to claim PIP after 2015 when he will be 66.

fluffymovie

I think the issue is perhaps the wording. In Housing Benefit, the proper term is "Applicable Amount" but if we put that on letters, people wouldn't necessarily know what we mean, so a lot of places try to explain it clearer.

The amounts have been set by legislation and increase each April in line with Inflation in the previous September. There is no specific link to living costs, this is purely a financial way of calculating an entitlement to benefit.