Are cost of living payments means tested?

hatsoff15

Hi everyone,
A friend of mine is in receipt of income related esa and pip,her partner lives with her and is retired and in receipt of state pension,she has never received any of the cost of living payments I'm pretty sure her ir esa entitles her to the payments,does anyone have any advice on this please?

Newcad

If she was entitled to a payment of IR ESA for a period (or periods) covered by the qualifying dates for the CoL payments then she should have had the CoL payment for that qualifying period.

However - if the income from her partners pension effectively 'nilled' the IR ESA then no CoL payment would apply.

She may still have recieved CB ESA payments because income from the partners pension did not affect that, but if it was only CB ESA that was paid and not IR ESA (because of the partners pension) then that would not entitle her to the CoL payments.

In other words although she may have had an underlying entitlement to IR ESA if actual payment of it was 'nilled' by the partners pension then the CoL would not be payable.

HillStreetBlues

Are you sure it's income based?
What are the amounts of both ESA & pension?