DWP requested more (complex) info on savings. Short deadline.

Frank_E

I am on ESA. I submitted annual savings and capital in August declaring all my savings as I did last year. I gave prints of the spot valuations of my two shareholdings and a fund. I received a letter A164 from last Monday requesting more info on savings.

I have a

Current a/c,
Savings a/c,
Shares in BT
Shares in Thomson Reuters, a now Canadian media/ market data firm
Some sort of fund " Global Equity Fund".

Over £6,000 in total, under £16,000.

“Bank statements on current & savings a/c Aug 2018 to date with explanations and receipts for 'daily transactions over £250'
“You also need to provide all details of shares held from 03/08/2018 to present, showing continuous value of shares for this period.”
Deadline Wednesday 13 Nov 2019
They only gave a Freepost PO Box and the generic ESA telephone number so I can;t get through to the department directly.
I have printed off PDFs of my bank statements, receipts.
I have telephoned 3 times to have them clarify what they mean by ‘continuous value of shares for this period’ but despite promises of a callback no one has called and I’ve had to stay by the telephone and been unable to visit the CAB. They weren't very helpful, in fact at times quite obstructive.

Unfortunately, I cannot find anything on the registrar sites or elsewhere tabulating and or graphing my shareholding values or fund value. Nothing ‘official’.

Would they include the ISA / OEIC fund (or whatever it is) as shares? They only give a statement in June and December. Not being December yet I will be unable to cover to October. The chap on the fund customer service line said they could order that information but it’s a lot of paperwork.

The Canadian shares are listed in Canadian dollars.

I check my bank accounts frequently, but I don’t even open the post so only dig out and see the share and fund valuations when these requests come in. I’m not sure what has triggered this, perhaps that the fund and one of the shareholding had a gain and I had to dip into my savings account to buy a washing machine and replace the SSD and storage drive on my computer.


I clearly missed that the Canadian shares had a ‘capital reconstruction increase’ (30 Nov 2018 ) (no idea what that is) so I seem to have less shares (21) than I did last year (24) but there’s not much in the registrar’s site in the way of history.

This has been keeping me up at night worrying and giving me physical pain trying to do anything.

I’m not sure what they want.
What to do? Any advice please?

huckster

With shares, some companies muck around with the shareholding. They reduce or increase number of shares, which may change the value of shares over a period. And they sometimes issue payments as part of the changes.

What ESA are probably asking is what the changes were. You may have had say 200 shares originally at say £10 a share, but now have say 150 shares valued at £15 a share. Asking about the changes is to see if there was any significant change to the shares value at any point.

I would suggest that you just provide what information you have available and in a covering letter, just provide any explanation/information to the best of your knowledge.

TELLIT01

ESA require evidence of the number of shares held, not just a spot price on one day. They then do a calculation to obtain the share value to be included in the savings / capital total.

calcotti

I also don't know what they mean by ‘continuous value of shares for this period’ as share prices fluctuate by the minute.

It would seem reasonable to provide a monthly valuation by confirming the number of shares you had on say the the same of each month and looking up their historic values on the internet (although if the number of shares in BT has stayed the same the DM should be quite capable of doing this themselves).

(NOTE: When DWP look at the value of your capital they will apply a 10% reduction to the share value to reflect the fact that there is a cost to selling shares so their full value cannot be realised. You still need to report the full value.)

NedS

If/assuming you have held the same number of shares for the entire period in question, it should be sufficient to provide evidence of that.

Where it may become complicated is if the number of shares has changed over time, maybe due to a dilution, or reinvestment of dividend etc at which point you will need to provide evidence of holdings and the dates they changed.

DWP can then calculate the value at any point in time they may be interested in.

Frank_E

Thanks all.
I'm still up stressing and pacing and hardly slept the last few of nights which is incidentally one of the reasons I'm on ESA
There is no facility on the website for either of the registrars of my two shareholdings to show how many shares I held at any specific time in the the past let alone continuous. DWP do or should have a record of my submission last year.
The Canadian shareholding has a transaction record for 30 Nov 2018 when they restructured the shares but I've had no other communication saying this took place.

They were so rude and evasive on the telephone.
It's so arrogant of the initiating department to not bother or refuse to call back.

The payment today has come through with reference DWP GB FP LP FUNDI then <my NI no> DWP JSA when I open up more details.
The amount is the same but the ref is usually <my NI no> DWP EESA.
FP is fast payment (it's usually BGT bank giro transfer).
FP is faster payment what is LP? Last Paymment? Have they shut down my claim?

Frank_E

calcotti wrote: »

I also don't know what they mean by ‘continuous value of shares for this period’ as share prices fluctuate by the minute.

510 minutes in each of the 313 trading days in the period.

calcotti wrote: »

It would seem reasonable to provide a monthly valuation by confirming the number of shares you had on say the the same of each month and looking up their historic values on the internet (although if the number of shares in BT has stayed the same the DM should be quite capable of doing this themselves).

It would but :
Equiniti do not even have that facility on their Shareview web portal hence the stress (basically just the current spot value).
Computershare have a little more but only three monthly statements and a statement when they rejiggled the number of shares.
The fund manager only has statements June and December


I've printed out daily share prices from the FT (which only allowed me to do that for one holding without a paid subscription) and from Shares Magazine. Many other sites only allowed a year's worth or printed without the values on the axes.

calcotti wrote: »

(NOTE: When DWP look at the value of your capital they will apply a 10% reduction to the share value to reflect the fact that there is a cost to selling shares so their full value cannot be realised. You still need to report the full value.)

They haven't in the past.

Frank_E

Now the post office won't accept the envelope.

calcotti

Frank_E wrote: »

They haven't in the past.

They should, see
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/832026/dmgch52.pdf

52671 Once the share value has been calculated as in DMG 52669, deduct 10% costs of sale as per DMG 52611, rounding down in the claimant’s favour at the last stage in the calculation.

NedS

calcotti wrote: »

They should, see
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/832026/dmgch52.pdf

52671 Once the share value has been calculated as in DMG 52669, deduct 10% costs of sale as per DMG 52611, rounding down in the claimant’s favour at the last stage in the calculation.

In my experience, in the past this work was done by processing staff in benefit centres who were familiar with the legislation. On Universal Credit, work coaches are often completing this work who are not always familiar with the process so often just look up the share price on the internet on the day in question and assign a value based upon the share price.


If the value has been incorrectly calculated, I would suggest calculating the correct value and posting the calculation to the journal together with a link to the relevant guidance and requesting a mandatory reconsideration by a decision maker, at which point it will be sent to someone who is actually trained to do these calculations.

calcotti

The bit I've quoted is from Decision Makers Guide for old style ESA which I understood OP to be receiving. No doubt there is similar provision for UC in Advice to Decision Makers.