How do DWP know how much savings i have?

Matilda12345

Hi, I receive ESA and PIP. I understand that my savings cannot go over £6000 but what if by accident they go a couple of hundred pounds over for a few days, for example when a bill is due? Would DWP know? I really don't want to get anything wrong. Do they randomly audit people or rely on honesty? Many thanks. 😊

Newcad

For PIP it doesn't matter what savings you have. You don't have to tell PIP.

For ESA it depends which type of ESA it is. If you are not sure then tell them anyway.

For Contribution Based ESA it doesn't matter what savings you have.

For Income Related ESA then any savings above £6k will reduce your IR ESA  payment on a sliding scale in steps (over £6,000 there will be £1 deducted, over £6,250 £2 deducted, and so on) until you get up to £16k at which point you are no longer entitled to Income Related benefits.

So going a couple of hundred above £6,000 will just mean that any IR ESA that you get will be reduced by a few pounds for the weeks that you are over £6,000.

You are of course supposed to tell them if your savings do go over £6000, but for a couple of hundred over it is not a disaster.

Then having said that -

Your normal incomings and outgoings such as paying bills are NOT savings.

You get your income (benefits), you spend it, that's just getting/spending not saving.

It only becomes "savings" if it hasn't been spent by the next time you get paid (benefts) and so starts building up.

Often it can be better to have 2 accounts, one for your benefits to go into and get spent each week/month, the other for what are actual savings.

Brie

You could of course pay the bills a bit early to avoid exceeding £6k.

heatherw_01

They CAN see how much money you have so do not lie or you are risking your whole claim!

One thing is that a lot don't realise is that you can't just spend money to get below the threshold as that is called "deprivation of capital".
Say you had £5k over the limit and you spent it just to get below, that is against the rules due to that clause.

More here: https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/how-savings-can-affect-benefits/

poppy12345

heatherw_01 said:

They CAN see how much money you have so do not lie or you are risking your whole claim!

One thing is that a lot don't realise is that you can't just spend money to get below the threshold as that is called "deprivation of capital".
Say you had £5k over the limit and you spent it just to get below, that is against the rules due to that clause.

More here: https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/how-savings-can-affect-benefits/

It will depend what you spent the money on. It's not always treated as DoC.

HillStreetBlues

heatherw_01 said:

They CAN see how much money you have so do not lie or you are risking your whole claim!

Currently they can't, only if they suspect fraud.
There is currently a Bill in Parliament that will change that.

wild666

I would suspect the DWP would try and say you're over the limit even if you pay everything on a credit card and the card's monthly DD takes the account under £6,000 when the bill is paid. It wouldn't really matter to the DWP it's what's in the account when or if they check the account of a claimant. 
Between two payment dates you can have over £6,000 in the account, it's what's in the account on the payment date that matters but you can still have up to £691 over the £6,000 and not get any money deducted from the ESA payment as they have to take the full £691 into account when they work out if more than £6,000 is in the account. 

They checked my account for fraud in 2016 and found out I was just a few pounds over the limit on a few occasions. I told them I just put my card in the machine and put in how much I wanted to withdraw and I never checked the total in my account. They added £40 to the money they wanted to reclaim so I sent them a cheque.