In a panic please help. AET self employed carer transitional protection ending

kazzyb123

NedS said:

HillStreetBlues said:

NedS said:

Yes, unfortunately this is correct.

This is about entitlement to Transitional Protection. If there were earnings above the AET in the first assessment period (which may be implied by the partner being gainfully self employed), then transitional protection will end where earnings drop below the threshold for 3 consecutive assessment periods.

If transitional protection ends, the claim will also close where the claimant(s) have more than £16k in savings as there is no longer an entitlement to UC.

If the OP's partner is gainfully self employed and subject to minimum income floor or the start-up period then would they be classed as earning above the AET whatever their ernings?

For the purposes of 'earnings falling below the AET for 3 consecutive assessment periods', it is the couple AET rate that applies as it is a couple claim to which said transitional protection applies, even though only one member of the couple may be working.

This is crazy

kazzyb123

huckster said:

No harm in raising a mandatory reconsideration appealing the last statement that you were not entitled.

This is quite complex and I doubt that many understand how entitlement to UC can be lost in the way explained in this thread.

If enough people raise mandatory reconsideration appeals about this. It should get picked up by DWP that there is an issue that needs addressing. 

Yes I agree, we have written some points on the journal today and my partner will go on to see them. Even if the claim ends it’s important that people point things out so they can be changed. It is as you say a complicated situation that probably wasn’t thought of when designing the system. For us we will be OK obviously because of savings but I have heard from others who have lost their transitional protection but the claim stays open (no savings) but they have lost £400 a month which when one of you can’t work it’s a hell of a lot. 

kazzyb123

8dayweek said:

So my understanding is… (and it may not be correct)

- For UC you have no AET / CET as you are both No Work Related Requirements (Carer / LCWRA) so no Jobsearch requirements etc. 

- For WTC you would have had to have one party working at least 16hrs p/wk to qualify (other member of the couple exempt, due to ESA - so removing the “normal” couple hours threshold for WTC down to 16 from 24 - so similar to AET / CET thing on UC)

- For TP on the UC claim, based on WTC entitlement you’d need to meet the AET (because the basis of WTC entitlement is a min. work amount - so the min. number of hours effectively becomes the AET for UC purposes)

- TP ends after 3x AP’s with Earnings below AET as this broadly mirrors WTC run-on rules (as in, in theory if the same were to have happened under WTC it could / should(?) have ended the WTC part of the claim)

Whether it’s correct or not in line with the finer reading of Regs I can’t be sure, but the “theory” of why it behaves like it does I’ve tried to explain. 

It doesn’t help that WTC is bundled up with an annual renewal, so for those Self-Employed it smooths over gaps, quiet periods etc. whereas someone Employed with a similar gap / unpaid period would have lost WTC (perhaps forcing a natural migration to UC earlier). 

I think, if prior to moving to UC your Husband was on Carers Allowance and you just had CTC alongside it (with or without HB) then your TP would have just been based on any difference between CTC (& HB, if applicable) with no removal of TP if falling below AET… because the AET (or a min. amount of hours) was never a 

Thanks for the detail reply, I appreciate the effort! I can see what you are saying regarding the 16 hours but he does work over 16 hours. It seems more that self employed have problems as you say. The most expensive expenses of the year come in Nov and Dec and also a lot of tax was taken out CIS and quietest time for work is on Dec too (can’t work outside, people don’t want work done at home in Dec). Enough hours were worked, enough money came in but it went straight back out again! 

At the job centre they look at you like they don’t believe that you don’t know when you will be paid or what expenses you will have eg how much Van mot and repairs will be. Like I say if we had claimed any other month of the year this wouldn’t have happened. It just seems unfair that it takes away transitional protection when we have no control over any of it.
I can see why the policy is there with the 1st month & 3 lower months but it doesn’t suit self employment and if carers have no work commitments for UC they should be exempt from the transitional protection rules too in my opinion.
we will do an MR and probably wrote to the MP because a lot of carers are going to get caught out and lose a lot when they weren’t even aware of it and have no control over most elements of their work either.
so much for you will always be better off in work, if he had done less in month 1 this wouldn’t be happening.
Also I can see the 16 hours point from tax credits but it’s still double the single person AET when one of us can’t work.

kazzyb123

NedS said:

Spoonie_Turtle said:

^ I think you're overcomplicating it.  This has only happened because their earnings happened to be above the AET for the first AP.  It wasn't a requirement for migrating or to have transitional protection in the first place, they just happened to earn that much during that month.

This is exactly it. The regulations state that entitlement to transitional protection will end under certain circumstances. One of those circumstances is where earnings are initially above the AET and subsequently fall below the AET for 3 consecutive APs.

The additional issue here, is that the OP has capital above £16k which would otherwise have prevented them from being able to claim UC without transitional protection. With transitional protection, they can claim UC for 12 months, but the moment that their circumstances changed such that they were no longer entitled to transitional protection, so did their entitlement to UC due to capital over £16k.

Anything else is not relevant and is just noise.

To me it is relevant. All of what you are saying is correct about the regulations, what I am questioning is whether the regs as they stand are fair to carers, or fair to the self employed in general of no one tells them what they need to do to maintain the claim. You can see why it’s confusing when you have never even heard of AET before, I can see now what all the regs are and the difference between no AET for UC but AET for transitional protection but when we looked on his account and had meeting at the job centre there is no mention of any of it which doesn’t seem right either. People looking for work etc have commitments showing what they need to do, the self employed aren’t told anything and job centre staff don’t seem to understand anything about self employment at all.
There are people without savings who are losing £400 a month because of this which just isn’t fair in my opinion.

kazzyb123

huckster said:

For the self-employed, it does underline the importance of trying to smooth out the income and expenses where this is possible, to fit in with how UC works. This might for example be agreements with clients on how payments are structured and with expenses to try to spread out payments where possible.

You would think so but that’s exactly what we tried to do, we didn’t want to pay for the van ins and breakdown cover and mot and repairs all in one month so we split it over two to “even it out” this is what made both months go below the AET in stead of just one . If we had done it all in one month the claim wouldn’t be closing. Same money in, same money out, just timing. That’s the frustrating thing

kazzyb123

I just wanted to say thanks for all the replies and help on this thread, it did help me to understand things. 

As the regs stand the claim will probably end but we will do an MR so that things might be changed for other carers in the future and hopefully some others might see this and it will raise awareness of the AET rule.
There are already carers losing hundreds a month because of this and it’s obviously not what the intention of the policy was when the website says carers shouldn’t need to work at all, I guess we aren’t all better off on UC.
I still also think it should only be the single person AET if you one person in the couple is a carer as one can’t work. Whoever designed the system must have not thought of all the scenarios.
For us, we have savings to fall back on but others don’t 

EmmaSalmon66

Im just adding to this because I was in a similar position, although I was the self employed carer in this case - working between part and full time, but earning under the amount that allowed me to claim carers allowance.

I was migrated over in July 2024, and at that time had 2 children who were getting PIP.

I was deemed not gainfully SE and like your husband, had no work or earning commitments, because receiving carers allowance rules that out.

In June, just prior to migrating over, I heard I was being given an Arts Council award. I spoke to the job centre about it, and asked about what I should do, and like yourselves I was given no advice about how this would affect my transitional protection, which was roughly £300 a month. I did not have savings.

Part of the grant was for 'things' and that wasnt counted as earnings, and some was wages for a defined period of time (8 months from Sept - April - actually itemised as 62 days across those months)

Carers allowance were happy that it fell within their remit.

I had to put in a request for when I wished to claim the grant, and at no point was it suggested that I wait until August, even though the timing of when the work started wasnt until September - and that it would have any kind of impact on the TP

Of course it hit my account in that first month, and 4 months later I lost my TP because 'I had not complied with my work conditions - of which I had none. The job centre were perplexed, they did not have a clue why I had lost it, even the manager didnt understand why, but eventually it was because the grant pushed me over the AET.

I had looked at it being considered as 'unusual/ variable earning, but for some reason that only applies if you are employed, not self employed.

I had looked at it being treated the same way as an identical grant from the Sports Council (who receive their funding from the same government dept and it has the same criteria) but because its not listed as one of the things that can be spread across the period, then it cant be spread across the period. Arts Council obviously have not lobbied for it enough.

The other thing that struck me when I went down this rabbit hole was that I saw that the newly self employed, even if in their start up and not needing to reach MIF will still have MIF applied for the first assesment the same way as the AET is used if you go over it. Am I reading that correctly?

Because if that is true, then that is already over the AET for a single parent, possibly for a couple - Im unsure - and as many single parents who are carers do small amounts of self employment around their caring duties and alongside carers allowance - which has a cut off earning threeshold of £195 a week.

So in therory you are in a situation where you are not gainfully self employed, but for that first month you are treated as if you are, but you will never be able to earn that AET £206 or MIF £427 a week and so will automatically lose the transitional payment after 4 months.

Remember carers are some of the hardest working and underpaid people, saving the country often thousands for their practically free caring

It does not seem fair or in the spirit of the transitional protection payment for this cohort

8dayweek

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/81919451#Comment_81919451

Sorry, I can’t quote properly on my phone… but in relation to this part:

The other thing that struck me when I went down this rabbit hole was that I saw that the newly self employed, even if in their start up and not needing to reach MIF will still have MIF applied for the first assesment the same way as the AET is used if you go over it. Am I reading that correctly?

Yes and No… being considered Gainfully Self-Employed and put in the Start Up Period (where the MIF does not apply) means your GSE status treats you as meeting the AET for the duration of the SUP - however Carers in the No Work Related Requirements group can never be considered GSE (and thus don’t qualify for SUP or go on to have the MIF applied), so that means their TP can cease if they fall into the Earnings about AET in first AP and then dropping below AET for three consecutive AP’s.

(The other group impacted by this is those who become unwell / incapacitated in their SUP and are determined to be LCW / LCWRA following their WCA - this means their GSE status is removed from the WCA Decision Date, and if applies for a retrospective period and means they’ve dropped below the AET for three consecutive AP’s since their GSE status was removed they will also lose their TP).

huckster

And don't forget to raise this issue with local MP's as it should be an interesting subject matter for them to raise with DWP ministers.

Where TP is lost, I suspect the reason is based on how old legacy ESA would have been affected by changes. So perhaps some research about how previous legislation dealt with the issues raised in this thread might be informative.

Yamor

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/81919451#Comment_81919451

I don't have anything to say which could help you, but I was intrigued by your comment that some of the grant was disregarded due to being a grant for 'things'.

There was a recent discussion on Rightsnet about this sort of thing, but my understanding was that in practice UC would always include the whole grant, but then allow you to include the purchase of the 'things' as expenses as and when they were bought.

Can you tell us some more about how and why they disregarded part of the grant?

Just to add on some other comments you made:

1. For TP purposes, even had the income been from employment, they would not have averaged it, and you would have lost TP after 3 months of earnings below the AET. It's not just an issue for self-employed people.

For that reason a grant from, say, the Sports Council would have also had the same effect if enough of it was received during your first Assessment Period on UC.

2. Regarding people in a start-up period, all the regs do is say that they are treated as earning over the AET for TP purposes, not that the MIF actually applies to the entitlement calculation.

However, this rule only applies to people in gainful self-employment, so won't be relevant to carers etc, who are not in gainful self-employment. Only in a situation like yours where the person ACTUALLY has earnings over the AET in their first AP is there an issue.

And anyway, this rule has effect for later APs as well, which means that as long as the claimant continues to be in gainful self-employment, then they won't lose their TP, as they will always be treated as earning above the AET for TP purposes.