Esa & hb.

lavvy

I have just received a letter from DWP saying that I am no longer getting as much ESA, it appears as though they have now taken me off the Contribution based element and I am losing £25pw, I can't see why as I have been on ESA for a long time.
I have recently been given HB based on my current income, (ESA, Work Pension). As I am losing £100 per month, shall I inform my local council to see if my HB can be increased. I am completely confused, £100 a month is a lot to lose, I am not sure if there is new legislation from the budget that has caused this, any help would be helpful. TIA.

nannytone_2

are you on cont based or income related?
how much is your pension?

Housing_Benefit_Officer

The local authority should be notified via the ATLAS system. Send whatever the DWP have sent you to your local Housing Benefit Department.

nannytone_2

on contributions based ESA, you are allowed £85 a week in pension before it affects your ESA, but on income related, it will be deducted from your ESA.
with regards to housing benefit, as long as you are receiving any amount of income related benefit, you will be entitled to the maximum amount of hb for your circumstances

lavvy

I am on Contribution based. My pension is £156pw.

nannytone_2

in your OP you said they have taken you off contribution based?
which one are you on?

after $85 a week, they deduct 50p for every pound over that amount., so they should be cutting your ESA by roughly £35 a week.

you hb will be worked out on the total of your ESA and your pension.

have you only recently started receiving the pension?

if you are on income related ESA, your pension amount would mean that your ESA would stop completely unless you are entitled to additional premiums because of disability

lavvy

Sorry, I am rather shocked by this. I am on Contribution based. I have 2 pensions, I have been receiving them since March last year. However I had a call last week from DWP asking if I had one or two, the more I think about it I think that they were actually correcting an error that they made.
I am assuming that they may have been overpaying me. I get DLA high rate and my husband gets carers allowance. I know that these are not counted though.
I am really asking if, as my current HB claim was based on a higher amount of ESA will it mean that my HB is likely to be increased.
As you will see an reply has advised me that the council will be informed anyway. I am relying on there being an increase as £100 a month is a lot to lose a month.

nannytone_2

did the council know about both of these pensions or just one?

you will have had an overpayment of ESA die to them not calculating the second pension, and they may claim this money back.

when you received your ESA award letter, did it have both the pensions included as income or just the one?

whether your HB rises at all will depend if they were using the additional pension as part of their calculation or not.

if they too were unaware of it, then your income will not have changed at all for their calculations .

you need to go back and check your award letters for both ESA and hb

lavvy

Yes I sent the HB office both payslips, so they are aware. I checked the letter last year when I informed the DWP of the pensions and they did only include one pension then, I just accepted their calculations then. I can see by comparing both pension amounts that it was incorrect, I do hope they won't blame me, as their documentation is far from easy to understand. I realise that they may ask for any overpayment back, but I assume that I can make an offer of what I can repay. I have only just been awarded HB in the last month as I had a lump sum payment which exceeded the allowed amount. This has now reduced to very little owing to having to pay almost my whole pension in rent. I will contact the HB office tomorrow, hopefully I will get a little more from them.

TELLIT01

If you only declared one pension to ESA when you claimed there could be a fine as well as them recouping the overpayment. If you declared both, but they only put one onto the system, they can still reclaim the overpayment but there shouldn't be any potential fine although you should have checked the letter at the time and advised them that they had only included one of your pensions.

Cheeky_Monkey

If, as you state in your OP, you received a letter saying that your payment will be reduced by £25pw, it looks like they are already clawing back the over-payment