Income Protection and claiming ESA

mcole63

Hi all

Please can someone advise whether I am eligible to claim or not? Sorry for the long winded question...

I have been off work sick since April 2017 with an eye condition and my employer has been paying me in full. They have now sent me an SSP1 form advising my SSP will stop at the end of January, after which I will be paid a percentage of my salary by the company Group Income Protection Insurance Scheme provided by Canada Life. The letter they sent me advises that I may be able to make claim for ESA.

I entered my details on the entitled to site and it said that I should be able to claim Contribution Based ESA. I submitted a claim and yesterday I recieved a call asking for more details. The lady kept asking me about my pension payments (I am only 54 so no pension) but I confirmed that I was only going to recieve Income Protection Insurance payments which she seemed to not really understand. After much discussion with her colleague she said that I was not entited to ESA because my employer had paid the insurance premiums.

So is she correct and I can only claim ESA if I had paid for the insurance myself?

pmlindyloo

Income Protection Insurance is treated like pension contributions.

So the first £85 a week is ignored and 50% of the remainder is deducted from the ESA.

This is what happens if the employer has been paying into the insurance scheme and you have not contributed more than 50% of the payments.

Link is here:

https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/658302/dmgch44.pdf

44700 and 44723

You should still make your claim for ESA as you could still be paid your NI credits. Depending on your income protection payment you could still be eligible for some ESA.
How much is your income protection payment per week?

mcole63

Hi pmlindyloo

Thanks for taking the time to reply :T - 44700 explains why the lady kept talking about pension payments.

The income protection payment will be £728 per week and my understanding is this will go through my company payroll so that deductions for pension / tax / NI etc can be made.