carer now esa

epitome

Once successful, if your ESA is £0.40 per week, you will have to tell ESA by phone that CA has stopped paying you, when it does eventually stop. If you do not tell ESA that it stopped they do not have to make the adjustment on your ESA claim.


If your ESA is £73.10, and your CA 0.00, then there is no need to tell ESA that CA closed when it finally closes. It would only be a courtesy of you to tell ESA... but it's better to tell them anyway, incase of other events.

You're welcome.

numan43

epitome wrote: »

Once successful, if your ESA is £0.40 per week, you will have to tell ESA by phone that CA has stopped paying you, when it does eventually stop. If you do not tell ESA that it stopped they do not have to make the adjustment on your ESA claim.


If your ESA is £73.10, and your CA 0.00, then there is no need to tell ESA that CA closed when it finally closes. It would only be a courtesy of you to tell ESA... but it's better to tell them anyway, incase of other events.

You're welcome.

Sorry to bother you again epitome but when calling esa on Monday do I say that this would be a mandatory reconsideration and indeed should I send it in writing too?

Thank you once again for your advice

Rob

epitome

No need for a man Recon at this stage. A phone call is all that is required. I realise you have to wait on hold a long time, so you could equally do this by letter, but will take weeks to be done if you send a letter on Monday. Maybe 3 weeks, you could make it slightly quicker (2 weeks) if you give your letter in at the local jobcentre. Try calling at 8:30am(?) or 2pm(?) just guesses -based on experience- when is the best time to call, after 4pm is very bad time to call. 17:55 can be a good time to call, remain waiting on the line past 6pm until 18:35 (they work till 18.30)

What you say is very simple, and remember the person who answers your call on Monday will very likely, not have a clue about this obscure area of benefit law. And also remember, they are not allowed to refuse your request for a HOTT to be sent. And you can request a call back in that HOTT if you feel the need.
(HOTT = pronounced "hot" as in hot and cold. or you can call it "a handover" )
All you need to do is say:

"Hello, my claim for ESA Contributory has been refused on tax years. I believe they have not followed correct procedures, can you please send a HOTT to the Benefit Centre to ask them to look again, I will tell you what I want you to write...."


DWP guy says in an unrealistic perfect world......... "Sure no problem, I will just get the HOTT open........... there we go, I'm ready, what do you want to say?"

"I have been claiming Carer's Allowance for the past 5 years.
Therefore, my ESA contributory SCC should be showing as satified.
And..... as I had Carer's Allowance in 2016 my FCC should be relaxed.
I request that you relax the FCC, and make the decision again."

Ask them to read it back to you before sending it... and you should get a new award letter within 2 weeks. If they read it back to you and say they are sending it, I would say there is no need for the call back, but if you want to be sure, just ask for a call back as well.

If you want to keep it really short, you could just say in the HOTT

"I request that you relax the First Contributory Condition on account of Carer's Allowance" The BC staff should be knowledgeable enough to know exactly what you mean and what they have to do.

No need for Mandatory Reconsideration, at least not at this stage.

Oh and while you are here reading this... If you find yourself on ESA C for more than a year. receiving payments of ESA C. .. and your ESA C payments stop after 1 year.......... wait 12 weeks and 1 day from the date the payments were paid up to, (i.e. 12 weeks without payment of ESA C) and then phone ESA and ask them to reassess your tax years to use the latest tax year 2016/2017....(again an obscure bit of benefit law, that the person you speak to will possibly say.."you can't do that" just ignore them and insist that the HOTT request is sent.) This would enable you to get another 1 year of ESA C. This assumes you have not had your claim closed for other reasons.

numan43

epitome wrote: »

No need for a man Recon at this stage. A phone call is all that is required. I realise you have to wait on hold a long time, so you could equally do this by letter, but will take weeks to be done if you send a letter on Monday. Maybe 3 weeks, you could make it slightly quicker (2 weeks) if you give your letter in at the local jobcentre. Try calling at 8:30am(?) or 2pm(?) just guesses -based on experience- when is the best time to call, after 4pm is very bad time to call. 17:55 can be a good time to call, remain waiting on the line past 6pm until 18:35 (they work till 18.30)

What you say is very simple, and remember the person who answers your call on Monday will very likely, not have a clue about this obscure area of benefit law. And also remember, they are not allowed to refuse your request for a HOTT to be sent. And you can request a call back in that HOTT if you feel the need.
(HOTT = pronounced "hot" as in hot and cold. or you can call it "a handover" )
All you need to do is say:

"Hello, my claim for ESA Contributory has been refused on tax years. I believe they have not followed correct procedures, can you please send a HOTT to the Benefit Centre to ask them to look again, I will tell you what I want you to write...."


DWP guy says in an unrealistic perfect world......... "Sure no problem, I will just get the HOTT open........... there we go, I'm ready, what do you want to say?"

"I have been claiming Carer's Allowance for the past 5 years.
Therefore, my ESA contributory SCC should be showing as satified.
And..... as I had Carer's Allowance in 2016 my FCC should be relaxed.
I request that you relax the FCC, and make the decision again."

Ask them to read it back to you before sending it... and you should get a new award letter within 2 weeks. If they read it back to you and say they are sending it, I would say there is no need for the call back, but if you want to be sure, just ask for a call back as well.

If you want to keep it really short, you could just say in the HOTT

"I request that you relax the First Contributory Condition on account of Carer's Allowance" The BC staff should be knowledgeable enough to know exactly what you mean and what they have to do.

No need for Mandatory Reconsideration, at least not at this stage.

Oh and while you are here reading this... If you find yourself on ESA C for more than a year. receiving payments of ESA C. .. and your ESA C payments stop after 1 year.......... wait 12 weeks and 1 day from the date the payments were paid up to, (i.e. 12 weeks without payment of ESA C) and then phone ESA and ask them to reassess your tax years to use the latest tax year 2016/2017....(again an obscure bit of benefit law, that the person you speak to will possibly say.."you can't do that" just ignore them and insist that the HOTT request is sent.) This would enable you to get another 1 year of ESA C. This assumes you have not had your claim closed for other reasons.

Done all as you've advised epitome though not very hopeful as girl at esa didn't have very good english nor did she have the first clue what I was talking about.

Anyway thanks for all your concise and detailed help, I've enjoyed the correspondence.

poppy12345

numan43 wrote: »

Done all as you've advised epitome though not very hopeful as girl at esa didn't have very good english nor did she have the first clue what I was talking about.

Anyway thanks for all your concise and detailed help, I've enjoyed the correspondence.

Then ring back and speak to someone different, i would.

Mojisola

poppy12345 wrote: »

Then ring back and speak to someone different, i would.

And if that person can't understand you, ask to speak to a supervisor.

epitome

Did you do this bit?

epitome wrote: »

What you say is very simple, and remember the person who answers your call on Monday will very likely, not have a clue about this obscure area of benefit law. And also remember, they are not allowed to refuse your request for a HOTT to be sent. And you can request a call back in that HOTT if you feel the need.
(HOTT = pronounced "hot" as in hot and cold. or you can call it "a handover" )
All you need to do is say:

Mr Numan, I gaurantee you are entitled to ESA contributory payments of £73.10 per week. All you need to do is INSIST on a call back from the benefit centre, and ask for relaxation of FCC.

Speak to a manager at the telephone centre if you need to, if they are refusing to send a request for call back,

Depending on what that girl said.... (refused to do?) ..make a formal complaint against her.

At the very least do all of the above by letter to your ESA Benefit Centre, telling them in a letter you want Relaxed First Contributory Condition to be applied to your claim, Put the words Mandatory Reconsideration in your letter if you want to....it's not necessary, but it won't hurt any.

Please don't make all my effort be in vain....

Please make me happy

numan43

epitome

I did indeed read your advice very carefully and tried my best to implement it in this mornings phone call. I read to her your words
The girl did send off some sort of hott but was mumbling (bad English) when reading it back to me.
Also she insisted that I didn't need or would get any call back.

This is now a matter of principle now and I wont let it go easily so no worries of me letting you down. I would have probably have given this up and went down the income related route if it wasn't for your prompting and advice but now I'm like a dog with a bone.

cheers epitome
rob

epitome

Ok, that sounds ok -sort of-
Sorry, the way you wrote your message #15 sounded like you had given up.

If you said someting like I really would like a call back, or if you were more insistant, then an official complaint, that she says she sent a HOTT but refused you a call back would -in my opinion- be in order. But only you know whether a complaint is in order depending on how insistant you were.

Because you did not get a call back arranged you are now in the dark.

You don't know for certain that a HOTT was actually sent (sometimes they are not sent even though they say it has been sent).
If it was sent, you don't know what priority it was sent
If it had been sent as a call back, it would have had a 24 hour timeframe.
If it has been sent as "Non call cack - 3 hours" it would have had a 24 hour timeframe
If it has been sent as "Non call-back" (the lowest priority) it may not get actioned for 3 working days or more.

You also don't know what the processing office has done about it.

What you need to do now...

Phone ESA Enquiries, ask if your request for the relaxation of tax years has been actioned, and what is currently happening? i.e.

What do the notes say? Does it say "HOTT received and request for FCC relaxation sent to department or DM"

If it does not say "HOTT received"
Please check what is the status of the HOTT that was sent on Monday?

If it says not cleared, ask for it to be resent, as either a call back (24 hours) or if you want, you can INSIST that it is resent as an escalation call back for 1 hour timeframe. making sure they note on the escalation your phone number and that you want a call back.... You have to make sure they note this, because otherwise they would be escalating what was originally a "non call back" the result would be that your "non call back" would be done in 1 hour without calling you and you would still be in the dark.

If it says cleared, and there are no notes to say anything about the subject, INSIST on an escalation call back to be sent for a call to be returned to you within 1 hour.

If the HOTT from Monday does not exist, then make an official complaint against the person who took your call on Monday.

If they say, the person you spoke to on Monday has not left a record of the call in CAM Contact History..... then see this post...Read this post in any event.
https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/72965251#Comment_72965251


Obviously your aim is to find out that the request is being looked at , or maybe they already have a decision?, but if unable to confirm this then the call back is for the processing office to confirm to you that it is being looked at and give you a timescale for a decision to be made.

Cpt.Scarlet

Numan

Tell them to look at paragraph 41032 sub paragraph 3.1 of the Decision Makers Guide Chapter 41

https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/605440/dmgch41.pdf

and

Regulation 8.2(a) of the ESA Regulations 2008 as amended

http://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2008/794/regulation/8/made