Income on UC help please?

Zziggi

Hello Everyone,

I wondered if anyone could help answer a query for good friends ours please. They live in a full service Universal Credit area and they are going to have to claim UC due to a change in circumstances (and so don’t have any transitional protection).

They are a married couple under pension age and have no savings and no housing costs. Currently they are both in the ESA support group, receive income-related ESA and both received DLA at the higher rate for care. At the minute they tell me the husband receives £388 per fortnight ESA and the wife gets £219 per fortnight ESA (=£1214 per month). Then they also get DLA.

They know the amounts will be less under UC but does anyone know how much they are likely to be please?

I’ve looked online and seen:
£498.89 Couple over the age of 25
£318.76 limited capacity for work & work related activity
(£126.11 limited capacity for work)
(£151.89 Carer element)

Any idea of their likely UC income please?
Am I right to think only one of them will be eligible for the £318.76 LCWRA. If so, which one gets it as they’re both disabled? They both have different conditions but both are never likely to work again. They have both been quite rightly in the support group for most of the last decade.

Zziggi

pmlindyloo

You need to check their ESA awards (look on the award letters).

From what you are saying it appears that one of them is receiving a contribution base award ( the wife).

This will make a difference to their UC award.

Out of interest, why are they being moved to UC?

Can you please tell us exactly what each is getting?

Zziggi

Claim is in the husband’s name and he is receiving income related ESA. He was previously on income support (due to illness) before being migrated to ESA IR a number of years back. The wife is on contributions ESA as she worked before becoming ill. Her illness came on suddenly and severely so she was working, became ill, claimed IB and migrated to support group of ESA. The couple met and got together when he was on IS a d she was in IB. At that point it became a joint claim of IS with wife’s IB deducted. When they were migrated to ESA, both were put in the support group and it is an IR ESA joint claim.

Does that make sense? I hope it’s clear.

Icequeen99

It makes sense, but i'm not sure i can see why they are transferring to UC?

IQ