ESA and work?

mrecuk

I am looking to get back into work after being a stay at home carer for the last few years and was wondering if anyone can help me work out how me and my partner are going to be affected by me going back to work.

My partner currently receives ESA (for both of us) in the support group. She also receives PIP and we both have a joint housing benefit claim. I also receive carers allowance. I have managed to secure a part time job that is 16 hours per week and was wondering how this going to affect the money she receives and what impact it will have on our housing benefit etc. I should earn a total of £136 a week.

Thanks in advance

[Deleted User]

Have you tried one of the benefit calculators like "turn2us" ?.

mrsp1987

You could go to your local citizens advice and ask for a "what if?" Benefit check

mrecuk

I have made an appointment with CAB but it's not until next week. I was wondering if anyone is able to help before I go to the appointment just to give a rough overview of how I may be affected.

Torry_Quine

Is the ESA completely income based or is she entitled to contribution based. You would lose any income based but contribution based would continue.

PIP is unaffected and housing benefit will need to be assessed on the new income. You will lose carers allowance.

mrecuk

Torry_Quine wrote: »

Is the ESA completely income based or is she entitled to contribution based. You would lose any income based but contribution based would continue.

PIP is unaffected and housing benefit will need to be assessed on the new income. You will lose carers allowance.

The ESA is income based. So would that stop completely? As far as I was aware I thought that you could earn up to £100 a week without it affecting your claim and anything after that they take away the difference? (And I thought that was the same for carers allowance too?). Eventually I will be going into full time work but I just want to make sure I don't end up with any nasty surprises and being left not being able to pay bills by starting off part time. If so, I'd rather try and go straight back into full time work instead.

Torry_Quine

mrecuk wrote: »

The ESA is income based. So would that stop completely? As far as I was aware I thought that you could earn up to £100 a week without it affecting your claim and anything after that they take away the difference? (And I thought that was the same for carers allowance too?). Eventually I will be going into full time work but I just want to make sure I don't end up with any nasty surprises and being left not being able to pay bills by starting off part time. If so, I'd rather try and go straight back into full time work instead.

If you earn over £115 ( or there about) you will no longer be entitled to carers allowance. As you are not the main claimant for ESa and will earn more than the ESA couples rate you will no longer be entitled although your wife will still get her NI credits. Are you sure that she doesn't get contribution based with an income based top up for you . Was she working and paying NI before her claim or transferred from IB?

TELLIT01

Torry_Quine wrote: »

If you earn over £115 ( or there about) you will no longer be entitled to carers allowance. As you are not the main claimant for ESa and will earn more than the ESA couples rate you will no longer be entitled although your wife will still get her NI credits.

The claimant is in the Support Group so their ESA is at least £145. That being the case ESA won't stop completely but will be greatly reduced by earnings of £136 pw.
The claimant can earn money up to a limit of about £116 if they are doing permitted work. This doesn't apply to the partner (in response to OP's earnings question)

Darksparkle

For carers allowance you can earn no more than £110 a week (after taxes, care costs while you’re at work and 50% of what you pay into your pension).

pmlindyloo

TELLIT01 wrote: »

The claimant is in the Support Group so their ESA is at least £145. That being the case ESA won't stop completely but will be greatly reduced by earnings of £136 pw.
The claimant can earn money up to a limit of about £116 if they are doing permitted work. This doesn't apply to the partner (in response to OP's earnings question)

As you say the OP's earnings will reduce the income based ESA but because of his wife being in the support group she would be entitled to the support group component and the enhanced disability premium.

Also there is a disregard of £20 per week ( I think that's the figure) of OP's earnings.

Therefore they will still be eligible for income based ESA (couple rate) as he won't be working more than 24 hrs.

The income based ESA will mean that he has an automatic right to HB so this should not change.

It might be worth the OP considering doing less than 16 hrs (if possible) and earning an amount which would still mean that he was entitled to Carer's Allowance.

CAB will be able to do some 'better off' calculations or, for a good estimate, he can use the suggested benefit calculator and put in some different scenarios.

mrecuk

Thanks for all the replys. So from what I gather, I would lose my carers allowance claim, my partner would still be entitled to ESA as I'm working less than 24 hours a week but they will deduct anything I earn from her claim after the first £20. I used the benefits calculator on a couple of sites and essentially I won't be worse off but I won't necessarily be any better off either. Hopefully CAB can give me an exact figure when I go to my appointment. Once again, thank you to all those who commented.