Accident compensation and ESA benefit

wendyg7246

Hi

The person I care for had a car accident and has received £1500 compensation for injuries.

He claims ESA and DLA, will he have anything deducted from his benefit?

He only claimed for injuries, no loss of earnings or medical costs

Thanks

pmlindyloo

wendyg7246 wrote: »

Hi

The person I care for had a car accident and has received £1500 compensation for injuries.

He claims ESA and DLA, will he have anything deducted from his benefit?

He only claimed for injuries, no loss of earnings or medical costs

Thanks

If the person claims contribution based ESA then the award will have no effect on this benefit.

If the person claims income based ESA personal injury compensation is ignored for 52 weeks.

DLA will not be affected at all.

Even if after 52 weeks if the claimant is on income based ESA then it will only be affected if this takes the savings amount to over £6000. Any amount between that and £16000 is deducted from the ESA at £1 for every £250 above the £6000.

But I expect the claimant will spend the amount on something that they need. Such spending would only be looked at if it was unreasonable in the circumstances.

rogerblack

I'm not sure the above is right.
If the claim was due to an accident that lead to the claim for ESA - then even if you haven't claimed for loss of earnings - some or all of the compensation may be recovered by ESA.
https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/cru

pmlindyloo

rogerblack wrote: »

I'm not sure the above is right.
If the claim was due to an accident that lead to the claim for ESA - then even if you haven't claimed for loss of earnings - some or all of the compensation may be recovered by ESA.
https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/cru

You may be right

I took it to mean that the OP was the carer of someone who already was claiming ESA.

HB58

I agree with Roger, if the ESA was claimed because of injuries sustained in the accident, DWP might want some of the compensation.

monty-doggy

I have just been through this, I was paid compemsation, I didn't receive all of my loss of earnings/out of pocket expenses as I had no choice but to settle. Dwp still took all of the esa I was awarded while not working back off me.

pmlindyloo

If the claimant was already on ESA because of a disability not caused by the accident then it is most likely that the benefits would not be recoverable.

Also if the compensation was handled by a solicitor or other professional then any repayments of benefits would have been paid out before the award was given to the claimant.

Unless the OP comes back then we will not know which scenario it is.