Disabled Student-Universal Credit

benstuart

The UC claim was accepted, the reason it was reduced to zero is the fact that the adjustments(student loan) outweighed the original award.
The point being Ben's circumstances have not changed.
Disability Rights UK(disabled students-universal credit), put it more succinctly how the system is doing disabled students a disservice than I possibly could.

Ineededaname

Perfect thank you.

The LCW rate IS payable on UC if the person's ESA or UC claim was started prior to April 2017. I'm assuming this is the case.

If he got one bed rate before that should also still apply.

Those are the two things you need to check with the DWP. If he's had a payment statement you can see which elements they've given him and the amounts so you can check this quite easily.

Alice_Holt

As he is now in the LCWRA group (post 11), I would have thought the UC award should have been:
Basic....................................................£252 pm (Under 25 rate)
LCWRA addition....................................£328
One bed rate housing element ............c£325 (estimated)

Giving a total of c.£905 pm. So, even after a £7k student loan deduction (and the housing element only applying during term time?) a UC award of £0 looks incorrect to me.
Unless, quite possibly, I have missed something. What do others think.

calcotti

If living away from home I think the loan could be £8,400 which over 9 months is about £930/month (higher in London).

This is not an area I know about the root of the OP’s question seems to be whether student loans are treated differently under UC than under Housing Benefit.

huckster

Why would ESA(IR) have paid £5500 to a student also receiving student finance to cover their living costs ?

Under UC as far as I know, they just look at student maintenance finance which must be the max the student can apply for. They disallow the first £110 per monthly assessment period and then apply the relevant student income amount against the assessment period months for the student year.

Did ESA rules exempt a disabled persons student maintence finance being considered and this is not the case under UC ?

If this is the case, this is not the first example i have seen where UC legislation has not included previous exemptions that applied to legacy benefits. Because the managed migration transition protection has not yet come into force, DWP can only go by current UC legislation.

Suggest you ask your MP to raise this with DWP ministers and also minister responsible for Universities.

Ineededaname

OP stated the loan is £6994. This is deducted in term time only (usually over nine months) and I believe there is a disregard of £110 each month. So £6994 / 9 = £777.11 - £110 is £667.11.

https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2013/376/regulation/71/made

So the base award would need to be higher than that for anything to be payable. I don't believe OP meant the son was found LCWRA. I think they were just mentioning the change in LCW made from April 2017. As I stated this shouldn't apply if the original ESA was made before then. I'd also assume the son is below 25?

So standard rate £251.77
LCW £126.11
1 bed housing at LHA rate.. ? Completley depends on the post code. Using Alice's rate of £325...

= £702.88

Doesn't look good.

I'm at a loss of how there is a £5534 annual loss from ESA/HB. Student income is taken into account for both of these as well?

calcotti

Sorry - missed the OP statement on the loan amount (can be difficult keeping track as the thread progresses)!

I think student income is ignored for HB if getting Income based ESA,see last paragraph here https://www.turn2us.org.uk/Benefit-guides/Full-time-students-and-benefits/Can-full-time-students-get-help-with-housing-costs - but OP said ESA only applied in vacation.

Ineededaname

Ahh I guess that is the discrepancy then, that's quite massive...

calcotti

Ineededaname wrote: »

Ahh I guess that is the discrepancy then, that's quite massive...

It would be but I wasn’t clear that it applied if was only getting ESA in vacation. If it doesn’t apply I don’t know if there are any other differences. Benefits and students not my area.

bigbill

Without reading all this post I would guess that the new UC claim does not include any extras such as LCW / LCWRA / SDP so would be a lot less than his previous HB calculation which would have had the disability premium and possible SDP included in their calculations.

Time will tell once more info is given.