ESA has dropped from £450per fornight to £259per fortnight and no reason given!!

money08

huckster said:

Has there been any change to Housing ?

No, no changes in anything.

Newcad

I think that I can see at least part of what is happening here, and why it's now all become so confusing.
From what you have said about your statements then it 's possible (probable) that your UC statements online have been changed.

Are you looking at older UC statements that you downloaded each month? Or are you looking at what they say online now?

It looks to me that there may well have been overpayment of UC. (Seemingly due to ESA incorrectly still paying you IR ESA (the premiums) after you had moved to UC, but UC only deducting for CB ESA?)

The fact that you say that your UC payments have been constant, but when you now look at the statements they yo-yo up and down, can be explained if such an overpayment has been the case.

If/when an error is later discovered that means you have been overpaid or underpaid UC for a while then they go back and change all those previous statements on your UC account/journal to say what you should have been paid and not what you were paid at the time.
When that happens then what the statements online say now bears no relation at all to what you were paid at the time. (or what your statements said at the time).

Which means of course that when you try to look at what actually happened, as you are doing now, you can't work things out properly because all the previous statements have changed so no longer make any sense to what actually happened or what you were actually paid.
(It annoys professional benefits advisers no end when that happens so they can't see what has gone on).

You can still get hold of the old statements from before they were changed, but that requires a Subject Access Request which can take up to 40 days.

You should get help from a local to you advice agency, you are probably going to need it.
You can find advice local to you by putting your postcode in here: https://advicelocal.uk/find-an-adviser

money08

Thanks for that. I do actually have CAB on  standby once I have contacted DWP to see what on earth is going on. They were brilliant when DWP cut me dead when the old incapacity benefits just stopped in 2013.

It also looks potentially it might be the recent £390 deductions they made in a trial process up North

DWP to cut £390 Universal Credit payment in Newcastle, Durham........

This fits about the best currently as my DWP ESA dropped from £450 fortnightly to £259 and would explain the off line in my annual statement this year. Nothing like using the poor as guinea pigs and just cutting benefits without question, and so much for the "trial" I dont even think its been passed through the law yet or whatever it is they use to make up stories.

Im reluctant now, as I said elsewhere to rock the boat anyway. Either way they will be attacking the disabled again with a full frontal posture to cut off their money and make them work from home regardless. Sigh.

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previously

OK just looked at my most recent Jobcentre Plus statement for ESA showing annual rate changes for April. Its added a line which it has never said before.
From Feb 17 2024 ESA £129
Then it adds this unusual line (You are not getting any more income-related employment abd support allowance)
then back to normal lines
from 13 April 2024 it goes up to £138.

 

A few pages on it then states how esa IS WORKED OUT
Limited capability for work addition=£44
Which gives you a total INCOME-RELATED AMOUNT- £44.70

 

No income will be taken off your esa bla bla so still £44
but then
"However because you are entitled to contribution-based ESA we will pay you" £129
from Feb 2024

 

so seems to be yet another issue twixt contribution and incme based esa!!

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

My UC payment for Jan 2024

Assessment period: 28 November to 27 December 2023

Dec 2023
Standard allowance
£368.00
Housing
£549.00
Limited capability for work and work-related activity
£390.06
You said your health affects you at work or prevents you from working
Total entitlement before deductions
£1,308.29

What we take off (deductions)
We take money off your payment
As this is an average of other benefits that you're continuing to claim
Employment and Support Allowance minus ‑ £561.17

Total deductions
minus ‑ £561.17
Your total payment for this month is
£747.12

I had to pay £550 rent out of that so in effect all I got from UC was around £200 to spend in Jan

In March payment the amount taken off was

As this is an average of other benefits that you're continuing to claim
Employment and Support Allowance - £368.99 (instead of the usual £561) so I guess that was when my 450fortnight dropped to 259fortnight.

Muttleythefrog

I think you can rule out being part of any trial... I think it's a trial for limited new claimants only anyway.. and you would have been informed and they would have engaged with you on that I'm sure... in any case it relates to UC and not ESA and you continue to receive (it appears) the UC LCWRA component in payment. So forget benefit changes being trialled or suggested for future... I am confident no such consideration is necessary to explain what is going on here which seems much more likely error and lesser so potentially misunderstanding.

As other posters have raised, and I suspected, it seems possible you've been wrongly continuing to get IR ESA after applying for UC voluntarily. When you applied for UC they should have switched you to C Based ESA if you were eligible (which would depend on working record in the 2 years prior to claim for ESA). If UC have assumed you were getting C Based ESA and you were not then there is risk here of overpayment due to the extra payments (premiums you would not have been eligible to continue receiving). But we could be wrong... devil in the detail and as another poster advises even the documents themselves like UC statements may not be able to be relied on as factual at the time of payment.

As you say... see what DWP say... and if don't get clarity and satisfaction then CAB. If you do see or speak to CAB I would try to have at hand, besides benefit letters, payments you've been receiving to your account from ESA, UC (possibly you can filter your transactions in online banking to "DWP" or income and print, or save as, or paste into a spreadsheet).

money08

Yeah thats a good idea. i have just downloaded everything since the claims started with UC. The payments and the journal. I shall now do the same with the bank over the last few years to see what paymenst I was getting. Thnx

8dayweek

Echo PP’s here that any income-related ESA should have stopped when you claimed UC and any contributions-based ESA converted over to New Style ESA (if applicable). It sounds like the ESA(IR) is overpaid and being corrected. 

One thing to check - you had SDP on the ESA…? Did you ever get SDP Transitional Protection in the UC award? It sound like maybe you should have done, but you don’t mention it being on your UC award so that would potentially any Overpayment lower.    

Newcad

Just to add as a cautionary note for anyone claiming UC.

ALWAYS download your statements as a PDF every month, it's easy to do, and keep them safe on your device. (Preferably with a backup, say on a usb stick).

That way if the DWP do ever "revise" them you still have the original to see what they have changed

Alice_Holt

The c.£259 fortnightly ESA (i.e £129 weekly CB ESA) equates to £569 a month.  (£129*52/12).

So, the UC deduction of £569 is correct for your CB ESA payments (23/24 rates).


Doing a spreadsheet is an excellent idea.  You could take it to Citizens Advice, and that would help them understand the issue.  I'd suggest something like:

Three columns -  1st breaking down your UC payments as shown on your UC payments page (per your post @ 2.20pm);
2nd column - the actual UC paid (from your bank account);
3rd column - ESA payments received in that assessment period  (from your bank account)

Rows would relate to the UC assessment period. 

money08

Yeah thats a good idea. If I can help any rather than just dumping the lot on their laps when they have so much to do as it is. I am slowly getting it all together. How far should I go back do you reckon?

I have had problems all along since incapacity was changed to ESA Jan 2014. One time I was on contributory, then a few years later someone realised it should have been income related as I had no work NI etc for well over a decade then. I seem to recall things got better once that was sorted. I also had the bright idea of shredding all my old benefits/bank stuff when I moved here, which would be so handy now.

Newcad

money08 said:

I have had problems all along since incapacity was changed to ESA Jan 2014. One time I was on contributory, then a few years later someone realised it should have been income related as I had no work NI etc for well over a decade then. I seem to recall things got better once that was sorted.

That was a well know errror with the transfers from IB to ESA not assessing for IR ESA when they were done, as you say it was later sorted out in a very big review excercise. (And lots of people got lots of backpay as a result of that review).

That IB-ESA eror review was a number of years ago now and so shouldn't be causing your current problem with UC.

However a thought/speculation does occur that might be relevant to that, were you already claiming UC when that review happened for you?
I know that a few people had already moved from IB to ESA to UC when it happened for them.