UC and if you go over 16k?

NedS

You should declare all your capital to UC together with evidence of any capital that you think should be disregarded (e.g, CoL payments you have received).

You do not need to declare income received in the AP, as this is not capital (note there is a difference between income and capital that is treated as income). Income includes anything classed as earned income (e.g, wages) and unearned income (e.g, any benefits received). A decision maker should not need to make a decision to disregard income received in the current AP because it was never capital to begin with.

If DWP make a decision you feel is wrong, you should follow the normal procedure of requesting a Mandatory Reconsideration followed by a tribunal. As noted above, it is your responsibility to provide evidence to prove that an amount of capital should be disregarded under the law.

blackstar

NedS said:

You should declare all your capital to UC together with evidence of any capital that you think should be disregarded (e.g, CoL payments you have received).

You do not need to declare income received in the AP, as this is not capital (note there is a difference between income and capital that is treated as income). Income includes anything classed as earned income (e.g, wages) and unearned income (e.g, any benefits received). A decision maker should not need to make a decision to disregard income received in the current AP because it was never capital to begin with.

If DWP make a decision you feel is wrong, you should follow the normal procedure of requesting a Mandatory Reconsideration followed by a tribunal. As noted above, it is your responsibility to provide evidence to prove that an amount of capital should be disregarded under the law.

Thanks. I decided to declare all monies, even wage and benefits but they should know easily they are to be disregarded and I also quoted the regs that say they are. 

Hope they do it correctly and disregard the income ie wage/benefits and also the COL. 

If not then yes will follow the mandatory reconsideration but only issue is no UC for however long potentially

NedS

blackstar said:

NedS said:

You should declare all your capital to UC together with evidence of any capital that you think should be disregarded (e.g, CoL payments you have received).

You do not need to declare income received in the AP, as this is not capital (note there is a difference between income and capital that is treated as income). Income includes anything classed as earned income (e.g, wages) and unearned income (e.g, any benefits received). A decision maker should not need to make a decision to disregard income received in the current AP because it was never capital to begin with.

If DWP make a decision you feel is wrong, you should follow the normal procedure of requesting a Mandatory Reconsideration followed by a tribunal. As noted above, it is your responsibility to provide evidence to prove that an amount of capital should be disregarded under the law.

Thanks. I decided to declare all monies, even wage and benefits but they should know easily they are to be disregarded and I also quoted the regs that say they are. 

Hope they do it correctly and disregard the income ie wage/benefits and also the COL. 

If not then yes will follow the mandatory reconsideration but only issue is no UC for however long potentially

But presumably you'll manage OK as you have money to fall back on if the amount of 'capital' you have (even if it should be disregarded) is sufficient to cause your UC award to stop.

blackstar

NedS said:

blackstar said:

NedS said:

You should declare all your capital to UC together with evidence of any capital that you think should be disregarded (e.g, CoL payments you have received).

You do not need to declare income received in the AP, as this is not capital (note there is a difference between income and capital that is treated as income). Income includes anything classed as earned income (e.g, wages) and unearned income (e.g, any benefits received). A decision maker should not need to make a decision to disregard income received in the current AP because it was never capital to begin with.

If DWP make a decision you feel is wrong, you should follow the normal procedure of requesting a Mandatory Reconsideration followed by a tribunal. As noted above, it is your responsibility to provide evidence to prove that an amount of capital should be disregarded under the law.

Thanks. I decided to declare all monies, even wage and benefits but they should know easily they are to be disregarded and I also quoted the regs that say they are. 

Hope they do it correctly and disregard the income ie wage/benefits and also the COL. 

If not then yes will follow the mandatory reconsideration but only issue is no UC for however long potentially

But presumably you'll manage OK as you have money to fall back on if the amount of 'capital' you have (even if it should be disregarded) is sufficient to cause your UC award to stop.

Our total monies including income/wage and benefits and capital combined are less than 16k. So for a time yes until we are down to zero in capital, savings etc. 

If they consider the Self Directed Support as capital or income then we would be struggling once savings have gone as we would have to live on our savings until UC was reinstated. But the Self Directed support is given on a prepaid card every month but we cant use the money to live on, it can only be spent on a PA or preapproved disability equipment etc from the LA. 

Yamor

HillStreetBlues said:

EDIT is the case law R(SB) 14/85?

Yes, that's it.

In general, this is the position:
1. Initially, the onus will be on the claimant to show that they have under £16k (as they are making a claim).
2. If subsequently, DWP want to say that the claimant now has over £16k, the onus will be on them to show that capital increased.
3. If it has been shown that the claimant has over £16k, the onus will be on the claimant to show that they have spent some, and they now have under £16k, or, in the alternative, that a disregard applies.
4. If DWP want to argue notional capital, the onus will be on them to show that the notional capital rules apply.

Yamor

kaMelo said:

Yamor said:

I agree with @HillStreetBlues.

There is simply no precondition to any of the capital disregards for a DM to make a decision before it can apply.

However, I would add that H2002 is correct, and backed up by case law, that the onus of proof is on the claimant to show that a disregard applies. But all that means is that in practice, where capital exists, then it should be taken into account unless the claimant can show that a disregard applies. **
It does NOT mean the claimant is legally required to tell UC about it.

** An example of the opposite is where capital has been spent, but there is a possibility of notional capital, then the onus of proof is on the DM to show that the notional capital rules apply.

EDIT:
I should add that if a claimant requires an extension to one of the 6-month disregards, then that does require a decision from UC.
But there is no time limit to requesting the extension, so in practice, even if you don't ask for it immediately, but wait until UC hear about the capital, and then request an extension, you should not be any worse off (although I would agree that this isn't legally the correct thing to do).

But how can that work as you can't do one without the other. Claiming a disregard and showing it should apply also requires you to declare the capital it should apply. to.

There is a) no need to claim a capital disregard, and b) only a legal requirement to report a change of circumstances which affects entitlement.

However, from a decision-making perspective, if DWP (or a Tribunal) know that you have capital, but you wish to argue that a disregard applies, then the onus of proof is on you to show that the disregard applies.

In practice what this means is that if you are certain that a disregard applies, then there is no need to report the capital. However, you should be aware that if and when DWP do hear about the capital, then the onus will be on you to show that a disregard applies/applied.

However, you do need DWP to provide an extension to the normal 6-month period provided for some capital disregards (where reasonable). I would therefore agree that however excellent your grounds for the extension are, you are required legally to report the capital and request the extension. (Because without DWP providing the extension, the capital is not disregarded, even where you have the best reasons in the world for an extension.)
There is no "time limit" to requesting such an extension though, so even if you (wrongly) don't initially report the capital and request the extension, it can still be done later if and when the capital is discovered.

blackstar

So the latest is that on the journal they asked me to declare all monies we have and a DM wouod decide what can be disregarded and not for us to decide that.. So I did that. Which means we go over 16k.
So our UC are on hold and they said it can take the DM up to 1 month to make a decision. 

So what next we have to do the same every month then? Plus have no idea what decision the DM will even come up with and Im expecting them to either no disregard anything or only somethings. 

What a carry on.....

HillStreetBlues

blackstar said:

So the latest is that on the journal they asked me to declare all monies we have and a DM wouod decide what can be disregarded and not for us to decide that.. So I did that. Which means we go over 16k.
So our UC are on hold and they said it can take the DM up to 1 month to make a decision. 

So what next we have to do the same every month then? Plus have no idea what decision the DM will even come up with and Im expecting them to either no disregard anything or only somethings. 

What a carry on.....

Total joke.
The rules don't help. You don't have to declare disregarded capital, but if you do then it's up to that person to prove it's disregarded. As the normal bods haven't a clue it's referred to a DM.

blackstar

UPDATE

So we got a message in the journal.to say

"Your earnings dispute has been sorted , we have made an underpayment of £xxx assessment period start date 29 May 2025- 28 June 2025 .

Payment will be in your account 11 June 2025

With regarding capital Decison maker has not yet made a decision , unfortunately I'm unable to give you a time frame as to when this will be done. The decision maker will notify you through journals once a decision has been made"

However, on the statement it has updated the savings to the correct amount. The amount we told them about in the journal that it should be after the disregarded capital and what the disregarded capital was. So they have obviously read this in the journal.

But under money savings and investments it's still got the amount over 16k without any deductions 

So its a bit confusing as to why they have written the capital is yet to be resolved?

Guess each month we will have to do this ie declare everything and then  send a journal message about wht should be disregarded and then wait for a DM to apply the disregards. 

blackstar

HillStreetBlues said:

blackstar said:

So the latest is that on the journal they asked me to declare all monies we have and a DM wouod decide what can be disregarded and not for us to decide that.. So I did that. Which means we go over 16k.
So our UC are on hold and they said it can take the DM up to 1 month to make a decision. 

So what next we have to do the same every month then? Plus have no idea what decision the DM will even come up with and Im expecting them to either no disregard anything or only somethings. 

What a carry on.....

Total joke.
The rules don't help. You don't have to declare disregarded capital, but if you do then it's up to that person to prove it's disregarded. As the normal bods haven't a clue it's referred to a DM.

UPDATE

So after almost a month of them passing onto a DM to decide what capital we have, we got a journal message from a DM at the Canterbury Service Centre (we are in Scotland).

They said 

"On 24 July 2025, your total money, savings and investments was £12289.41."

They have put our capital to over 6k more than what it should be as on the last day of our AP on 28th June 2025 our capital after deductions was £6,432.47. Our AP is 29th - 28th. 

We know we have correctly disregarded the right amount of capital.

We have written a Mandatory Reconsideration in the journal asking why our journal declarations were ignored where we show the correct amount of capital and why certain capital should be disregarded. 
We also asked for their breakdown as to what they have not disregarded and why?

Also does anyone know they stated our capital on 24th July 2025 was £12289.41 but the date we made the journal declaration was the last day of our AP which was June 28th 2025. So did they go through all our bank accounts yesterday without us knowing and come to that figure yesterday? Confused? 

Anyone advice on what to do next?

Thanks all