ESA and NI Contirbutions help please?

melphelps

Hi there, looks like I will be retired on ill health grounds soon, currently off sick, but I will receive only a very small pension due to working part time. I thought I would be entitled to contributions based ESA ( def would not be entitled to income based) but have encountered the NI contributions eligibility clause. I have paid many full years but on the 2 years that will be applicable when I apply in April, 2015/16 and 2016/17, I have not paid enough. I have Full NI for 2016/17 but am missing some in 2016/16 as only worked for 30 weeks that tax year due to ill health when I was unemployed and not claiming anything. I spoke to HMRC today who said I could make up the NI contributions but as they would be class 3 they may not count for eligibility for CB ESA...can anyone advise me if there is anything I can do? Thanks in advance

epitome

Any voluntary credits you make will not help you to qualify for ESA CONTS.

Are you currently on SSP? If not you could claim ESA now.

The only thing you can do is to find someone you know who has a disability benefit, and claim Carer's Allowance to care for them.... To get CA you cannot be earning more than £110 a week (I think).

If you claim CA before April 2018 you will qualify for ESA Conts for an ESA claim that starts in January 2019.

If you start your CA claim after April 6th 2018 you will only qualify for ESA Conts starting in January 2020

Up to you if you also decide to claim ESA Conts in 2018 to see if you qualify and if you don't ...up to you to keep the claim open for NI credits while you wait till 2019 or 2020. And while you are on NI Credits you will be assessed and the DWP will decide if you qualify for ESA or if you fail.... If you fail then this could affect your chances of being paid ESA in 2019 or 2020.

You only have to claim Carer's Allowance for a minimum of 1 week.

Also in order to do this you must satisfy the SCC for both tax years so that means your tax years 16/17 and 17/18 must have earnings or credits to the value of 50 x LEL

Which means you must claim benefits if you finish work before April 2018 (Carer's Allowance will do, or ESA)
or if you are aiming to qualify in 2020 then 17/18 and 18/19 must be satisfied which means claiming benefits straight away and remaining on benefits up to at least April 2019.

saraside1621

We had the same situation. My husband was totally up to date apart from one year - which was one of the years they based it on! We paid the missing contributions (it was only about £150) and were then told he would get a six week penalty on ESA. In the end though, they actually backdated the payments to the date he applied.

epitome

saraside1621 wrote: »

We had the same situation. My husband was totally up to date apart from one year - which was one of the years they based it on! We paid the missing contributions (it was only about £150) and were then told he would get a six week penalty on ESA. In the end though, they actually backdated the payments to the date he applied.

That is because he was self employed, and you paid the missing self employed (class 2) contributions, all other factors like earnings must have been satisfied.

The OP has said nothing about being Self Employed. OP is employed, paying voluntary class 3 will make no difference to the OP.