Contribution based ESA support group

Room154

This is my first post so I hope I'm doing it right. We are moving in with Mum as she has dementia and is 89. My husband is giving up his Income based ESA so Mum will pay him an allowance. I am on the old contribution based ESA support group.
We will also be giving up housing benefit and our social housing bungalow, also free prescription, free dentist and glasses voucher.
After an hour long phone call to DWP about this, they said they couldn't help.
All they said was that if we move into a different local authority, that I would probably have to go onto universal credit.
If we are not claiming IB ESA or housing benefits, why would it affect my ESA.
I also read earlier that changing doctors surgery could also trigger a move to universal credit.
I also don't know what is classed as local authority, is it my district council or county county council.
Can anyone help me with this confusion please.
Thank you

sportsarb

If you are on ESA(C) then you can't be forced to claim UC. It would only be if you needed to claim an income related benefit. Anything else would be perverse given that ESA(C) is supposed to be a personal benefit and earned through contributions.

The only question I would have is whyare you giving up the income related benefit? Moving in with a parent doesn't stop you claiming income related benefit, they can have their claim and you can have yours, the only potential factor is the loss of any severe disability premiums depending on circumstances.

Alice_Holt

I'm also puzzled by why your husband would give up Income Support.
Why do you think this is necessary?
Can you explain why he gets it at present - are you in receipt of PIP, and does he care for you?

I'd suggest a benefit check at your local CAB before you end the claim.
Have you considered Carers Allowance? Or does your husband receive the carers premium on his ESA for you?
Can you give us more details.
If your mum is in receipt of Pension Credit, she will need to notify a change of circumstances. Is she getting Attendance Allowance? Are you her appointee / POA?

You would only need to claim UC if you had housing costs (rent) to cover.
Changing GP's doesn't prompt a change to UC.

Please get accredited advice, take you details and your mum's before you do anything else.

calcotti

I second what sportsarb has said - I see no reason for your husband to give up his income based ESA. His entitlement is unchanged by moving in to to your mother's. As you note without his income based ESA you lose the free prescriptions etc. Unfortunately if he has already given it up he will not be able to reclaim it and the replacement benefit would be UC.

If your mother gets DLA, PIP or AA husband could look at claiming Carer's Allowance for looking after her.

Room154

Thank you all for your replies. It's a bit of a long story really. We do get severe disability premiums on top which ends up a comfortable sum.
However, Mum is very comfortable financially how ever long she lives. She is moving to our area and moving in with us temporarily until she buys a bungalow, then we will live together. Living with her is for reassurance and protection. We have just gone through 16 months of terrible abuse from other family members and nobody would listen or look at the evidence of what they had done to Mum, Dad, my Husband and myself. We have been living in fear all this time. Needless to say it was all about money.

One thing they did was make a malicious call to benefit fraud to say that Mum was supporting me financially. Totally untrue and when questioned on the phone by DWP they realised it was malicious but said they would still have to watch me for 14 months and if there was another report then they would have me in for questioning under caution. Even though we had done nothing wrong, it was very upsetting and frightened the hell out of me.

This call from DWP came a few days after Dad died. He died early as a direct result of the abuse and bullying he suffered at the hands of the rest of the family.

So we can all get on with the rest of our lives in peace, we thought we would do things this way. We have lived through a living hell and Mum is leaving the home she has just sold in just a few days without telling them.

I am over 60 and disabled, my Husband isn't quite 60 and disabled. We are both mentally and physically exhausted.

Another problem we have is one member of the abusive family is a PC, we went to tell a more senior person where he works and they said it was a family tiff.

It has been much more than that and we have plenty of written evidence.

I can't say any more than that about our situation, but I hope you now understand why we want to limit anything more that they can do to us. Mum is happy with the idea we have because she wants to be able to forget about them.

Oh and because Mum and Dad were victims of abuse, when social services spoke to them they clammed up, which is very common.

If you like this is our way of trying to get out the system as much as possible to protect ourselves and Mum.
Everything about us will be private, except the only worry is the PC could find us and the family could kick off again.
Mum is not going to die the horrible death that Dad suffered.

This is why I asked this question. So any help would be gratefully received.

Thanks

calcotti

The short answer is, as sportsarb said, that if you want to surrender your existing income based benefits you are not required to claim UC and your contribution based ESA can continue.