Attendance Allowance and Severe Disability Premium Start Date Query

roy_harper

Should I use the entitled to date or the date benefit started to be paid?
The AA letter says entitled to from 03/12/24 but the AA payment started 09/12/24.
When applying for Severe Disability Premium I asked it to start 09/12, but should I have put 03/12.

Robbie64

I wouldn't worry about as the benefit office (I'm assuming Pension Credit?) will check the start date of the AA before awarding the severe disability premium / additional amount for severe disability. The SDP will be backdated to when AA started and this will be the date on their computer system (I'm assuming it will be 03/12/24, which, I assume, as AA is a weekly benefit - even if paid every four weeks - and paid in arrears is actually the same as the first payment date of 09/12/24).

bjc

I appreciate I am a bit late to the party but from personal experience I would not count on Robbie64's confidence in DWP if you have not already received full payment dating back to December 2024.

I am dealing with a case for exactly the same dates on behalf of a client.  The facts are,  you should be paid the SDP from the date you first became entitled to it (assuming nobody caring for you is claiming the carers allowance), be that the date you were awarded AA from OR from the actual date you became entitled to it, if prior. Given my experience though you will be told by many of the DWP operators that there is no entitlement to back pay. That is absolutely not true.

However to stick to your question, you are entitled to payments from the first full week commencing after the award start date, hence the 9th is the date payments should be calculated from. However I have such little faith in DWP that I would personally advise anyone to enter the award date itself to avoid a`ny confusion. 

If, like my client, you end up receiving the weekly uplift but not the back pay, you may well find it extremely hard to convince the staff that there is an entitlement to backpay at all. I have made19 phone calls since the 6th March 2025, as well as writing letters, and anly one person to date has agreed that backpayments should be made, despite it apparently being very clear in their manual!

Given my experience with this case it worries me how many people may have missed out on these back payments. I am reliably informed that the DWP have to respond to an MP's letter within 7 days so, might I suggest if you experience similar problems you choose that route rather than mess about. It is certainly what I shall be doing next. 
  
When I did speak to the one guy who seemed to know the system, I was told that the same person calculating the weekly uplift on the Pension Credit, which was awarded correctly starting from May 2025 in my client's case, should have also calculated the arrears and made that payment in May as well. That did not happen in this instance and I am guessing there are a lot of poeple that believe the staff when told there is no entitlement.