Income support stopped

dawnyp72

Hi all.
Hope this makes sense. My son had to stop claiming dla at 16 and apply for pip. Pip was initially refused and dla stopped on 22/08/2019 and carers allowance stopped on 26/08/19. I informed income support and told them I was going to ask for mandatory reconsideration, they advised that my IS would continue until 18/10/19 but if the MR was successful to let them know and IS would not stop. MR was successful and my son was awarded ERC and SRM on 1/10/19, I reapplied for carers and told IS straight away, they said that I would have to wait for my carers award and if there was no break in the entitlement for carers allowance that my IS would continue. Last week I was awarded carers allowance, backdated to 26/8/19 ( the date my original claim ended so no break in entitlement) I contacted IS, a very nice gentleman said that my IS claim had been closed on 18/10/19 but it shouldn’t have been because I had informed them of my claim for carers allowance, he said dwp would contact me and get my IS claim reopened. Missed their call on Monday so I called them today to be told the decision maker had said that because I had had to reclaim carers allowance I would now have to claim UC. This contradicts everything I have previously been told. So now not only have I lost 5 weeks of IS, my housing benefit and tax credits will stop and I will now have to wait another 5 weeks for UC when I apply for it.
This has all taken months to sort out and has been extremely stressful, I have kept IS updated and it now turns out I have been given misleading information each time I have contacted them.
I would be very grateful for your advice before I claim UC.
Tia

poppy12345

I'm not sure why you were told that the Income Support could continue. As there was no PIP award and the DLA ended when your carers allowance claim ended then your Income Support should have also ended, even though you were requesting the MR. There was still no entitlement to PIP at that time. As your Income Support should have ended you should have been advised to claim UC back in August.

calcotti

I don’t think DWP were right to close the IS claim. I think IS can be paid as a carer if you are looking after a person who gets a qualifying benefit regardless of whether or not you are getting Carer’s Allowance.
Income Support Regulations 2014, schedule 1B, paragraph 4(b)

dawnyp72

Thanks for your reply.
Income support doesn’t stop at the same time as dla and carers, it continues for 8 weeks with a disability premium so it was due to end 18/10/19 My son was then awarded pip after MR on 1/10/19. Both pip and carers were backdated to when the dla stopped so there was no break in entitlement. I was told by dwp and welfare rights that if he was awarded pip before the IS stopped then I could stay on IS and not have to claim UC

poppy12345

calcotti wrote: »

I don’t think DWP were right to close the IS claim. I think IS can be paid as a carer if you are looking after a person who gets a qualifying benefit regardless of whether or not you are getting Carer’s Allowance.

Are you sure that's correct? When IS continued, should it have continued because there was no DLA or PIP award, which means no qualifying benefit.

calcotti

poppy12345 wrote: »

I'm not sure why you were told that the Income Support could continue. As there was no PIP award and the DLA ended when your carers allowance claim ended then your Income Support should have also ended, even though you were requesting the MR. There was still no entitlement to PIP at that time. As your Income Support should have ended you should have been advised to claim UC back in August.

I believe Income Support continues for 8 weeks after the DLA and/or Carer’s Allowance ends which is why OP was told it would continue to 18th October. By that date his son had already had a PIP award and OP therefore met the caring condition. In my opinion the IS claim should not have been closed.

OP, I think you will have to go back to DWP and request a Mandatory Reconsideration of the decision to close the claim. Unfortunately this will take time.

Your Housing Benefit and Tax Credits should not be affected by the decision to stop IS so you should be able to keep these going while you try and get the IS decision changed. You will however need to tell your local authority about your situation in order to get the Housing Benefit calculated while you are not getting IS because you have lost the automatic entitlement.

As an aside, you may wish to get a benefit check done at Citizens Advice, or use an online calculator https://www.gov.uk/benefits-calculators, to check how UC compares with IS, HB and CTC (all of which would end if you did claim UC).

poppy12345

dawnyp72 wrote: »

Thanks for your reply.
Income support doesn’t stop at the same time as dla and carers, it continues for 8 weeks with a disability premium

What disability premium were you claiming?

poppy12345

calcotti wrote: »

I believe Income Support continues for 8 weeks after the DLA and/or Carer’s Allowance ends which is why OP was told it would continue to 18th October.

Thanks for that, i didn't actually know that. You really do learn something new every day.

dawnyp72

Poppy12345 ( I don’t know how to quote your question at the top of your reply) The disability premium gets added to your income support and then the carers allowance is deducted

calcotti

dawnyp72 wrote: »

Poppy12345 ( I don’t know how to quote your question at the top of your reply) The disability premium gets added to your income support and then the carers allowance is deducted

I think you are probably referring to the Carer Premium, not Disability Premium.

(To quote someone go to their post and click the speech bubble button to the right of the Edit Post button.)

Rubyroobs

dawnyp72 wrote: »

Poppy12345 ( I don’t know how to quote your question at the top of your reply) The disability premium gets added to your income support and then the carers allowance is deducted

The disability premium for your son would be on tax credits surely unless you are disabled yourself?