UC and if you go over 16k?

Spoonie_Turtle

blackstar said:

Spoonie_Turtle said:

blackstar said:

BORN again thanks for the advice.

Spoonie, thanks for your advice and yes I will take a screenshot next time. There is a box for welfare support payments whixh I belive are disregarded for 12 months. Last month we put in our child's direct payments ie Self Directed Support and that amount was then deducted from our capital at the end of the declaration. Rather than it just simply being ignored as it should have been. So had to start all over again. 

Ohhhhh in that case I may have made a mistake with mine.  Oh dear.  They really don't make it clear or simple!  (And still waiting for a formal decision on mine that they've not calculated correctly, but at least for me it's a dispute about the £6k threshold and not the £16k threshold affecting overall eligibility.)

Ohh I hope you haven't made a mistake with yours.
I was shocked when it deducted the welfare support payments from our overall capital rather than just disregarding it as capital? Makes no sense at all??? Plus Direct payment ie SDS in Scotland is not a welfare support payment either its totally different but that was the closest category so had to change it and just declare it as the advisor told me to do in the journal. 
Yes glad you are just debating the 6k aspect and not a over 16k affecting overall eligibility...we are 10k below the 16k but if you add on the direct payment for our disabled child it takes us over 16k, even though this money is not technically ours, it can only be used for specific things the council have approved to meet our childs disability and controlled by the council and any underspend is automatically recouped by the council, they control the allpay account but the advisor on Uc journal told us we have to still declare it as its money we have access too...

There's not even a mechanism not to, is there, as it says to enter all the amounts in all the bank accounts - and to me that implies if you enter something that doesn't match when they ask for statements, you're still going to have a fight on your hands.

Really badly designed, terrible process.  The option to put disregarded amounts per that screen with the list of boxes is a step forward, but it's not as helpful as I had imagined it would be when I heard they'd brought it in.

[I honestly despair for people who don't know there's a difference between income and capital, or that certain payments are disregarded.  And I dread to think how much money DWP is wrongly deducting from people.]

peteuk

blackstar said:

Thanks all.
.
Trouble is, does this mean the same thing will happen everytime my savings are more or less than £250 difference at the end of each AP? 

If your over £16K then you dont need to worry.  As youve stated your over £6K at the least. 

So once you hit £6K you are ment to declare your capitol, as for each £250 or part of, over the £6K your UC is reduced by £4.35.  If you have £6.5K then thats a reduction of £8.70.

You are then meat to declare if you go above this or if you drop to £6,250. As either will change the deduction. 

Just a reminder for others that any wage or benefits received in the AP is not counted as capitol until the end of the following AP.

blackstar

So today I went to my local jobcentre to ask if theres anything they can do to help with the delay on a DM assessing our capital as its holding up our UC Payment.

Can I ask if I am doing this correctly? As the guy I spoke to didn't agree.

So we added up all our monies on the last day of the AP without making any deductions as we were told not to in journal.

So I showed him a spreadsheet.

All our monies on July 28th 2025 (last day of AP) June 29th - July 28th 2025 AP.

Without deductions 14k.

With deductions (ie if you subtracted all income ie wage and benefits received within June 29th - July 28th 2025.) It comes to 10k.

He said the figure that should be used is 14k as your capital. I said yes but why are you not disregarding the 4k of income we received in that AP. He said "because everything was the same the AP before that one and before the one before that roughly, so therefore your capital is now 14k"

I said "yes but that income (wage/benefits) of around 4k should be disregarded each month, so for example we spend that 4k of income each month then our capital should always be considered as 10k" he again said "no that's not how it works, it's now considered as capital as you always are around 14k each month in total at the end of each AP".

Who's correct here? 

Spoonie_Turtle

The guidance is correct.

And as a knowledgeable member here advised me, when talking about income it's better to avoid saying 'disregarded' because it's simply not capital and therefore shouldn't be included in the first place.  (Even though the facility for reporting capital doesn't give any choice to do it properly.)

Dreadful.

[Just out of interest, in the cyclical nature of bank account amounts, do you know roughly to what level your total tends to drop?  If anything that would be closer to your capital amount than just what happens to fall at the end of an AP.]

blackstar

Spoonie_Turtle said:

The guidance is correct.

And as a knowledgeable member here advised me, when talking about income it's better to avoid saying 'disregarded' because it's simply not capital and therefore shouldn't be included in the first place.  (Even though the facility for reporting capital doesn't give any choice to do it properly.)

Dreadful.

[Just out of interest, in the cyclical nature of bank account amounts, do you know roughly to what level your total tends to drop?  If anything that would be closer to your capital amount than just what happens to fall at the end of an AP.]

Yes theres no way to not include income as its on the bank balance that they think is capital. Even though I said you shouldn't include that wage/benefit you can see on the statement. But they still do include it as a grand total of capital. 

Our bank balance fluctuates between 2/3k in the AP. So drops up and down between 2/3k over the course of the AP.
The end of the AP sometimes my wife gets a double pay so our balance is far higher than th3 AP she doesnt get paid twice in the same AP. 

Really hard to get our overall monies closer to the real amount of capital that we have (without income included as UC like to do).

Just dont know what to do. 

What's next after a Mandatory reconsideration? A tribunal? And then who even in the CAB for example understands this issue? As UC dont

Grumpy_chap

blackstar said:

Without deductions 14k.

With deductions (ie if you subtracted all income ie wage and benefits received within June 29th - July 28th 2025.) It comes to 10k.

So your income is £4k in the month?

HillStreetBlues

The guidance isn't totally correct. The £500 only needs to be report if Katie still has the capital at the end of the next AP.

blackstar

Grumpy_chap said:

blackstar said:

Without deductions 14k.

With deductions (ie if you subtracted all income ie wage and benefits received within June 29th - July 28th 2025.) It comes to 10k.

So your income is £4k in the month?

2 adult 2 disabled children.
1 wage is 2k
Child Disability Payments 
Scottish Child Payments 
Hmrc child benefit
Universal credit 

Comes to around 4k per month 

blackstar

HillStreetBlues said:

The guidance isn't totally correct. The £500 only needs to be report if Katie still has the capital at the end of the next AP.

What do you think about what I was saying with regards to my JOb centre vist? Hill?

HillStreetBlues

blackstar said:

So today I went to my local jobcentre to ask if theres anything they can do to help with the delay on a DM assessing our capital as its holding up our UC Payment.

Can I ask if I am doing this correctly? As the guy I spoke to didn't agree.

So we added up all our monies on the last day of the AP without making any deductions as we were told not to in journal.

So I showed him a spreadsheet.

All our monies on July 28th 2025 (last day of AP) June 29th - July 28th 2025 AP.

Without deductions 14k.

With deductions (ie if you subtracted all income ie wage and benefits received within June 29th - July 28th 2025.) It comes to 10k.

He said the figure that should be used is 14k as your capital. I said yes but why are you not disregarding the 4k of income we received in that AP. He said "because everything was the same the AP before that one and before the one before that roughly, so therefore your capital is now 14k"

I said "yes but that income (wage/benefits) of around 4k should be disregarded each month, so for example we spend that 4k of income each month then our capital should always be considered as 10k" he again said "no that's not how it works, it's now considered as capital as you always are around 14k each month in total at the end of each AP".

Who's correct here? 

What it looks like the guy did was taking your spending from income, not capital which is what guidance seems to imply. Working it out that way there is no income to be deducted meaning everything at the end of the AP is capital.
Everything I've seen on here before including my own review lets a person spend their capital during their AP  leaving income intact. If the DWP have changed policy (or even just leave it to DMs to decide)  it signals a big shift in spending income as default
A person might having to prove what account money was spent from to see if income or capital was being spent.

I for one would be caught out if the policy has changed, I expect with quite a few others.