Universal Credit phone appointment regarding ESA

Vates

Hello, I just received a message on my journal that says it is a 'Agree a New Style Employment and Support Allowance commitment' phone appointment. The problem is my ESA award was completely Income Related according to the letters I used to receive, they always had £0 under the contribution-based part. So I am obviously confused. Does this mean I will get less money overall? Why did the letters always say £0 under the contributions-based part?

Newcad

 

It sounds like you had an entitlement to both Income Related ESA and Contribution Based ESA.

The letters always have been very confusing about that.

Many people on IR ESA also do have entitlement to CB ESA but aren't aware of the fact because overall the ESA payment is the same.

Your IR ESA has migrrated to UC. your CB ESA doesn't and so is still in payment seperately.

What you get as just CB ESA each fortnight is less than before when it was both CB and IR, and it gets deducted £ for £ from your UC each month. Overall though your combined benefits should be the same or more than it was.

PS. This thing about the Claimant Commitment for New Style ESA when migrating to UC is new'ish. It appears to be a not quite expected consequence of a change to the computer systems - they will probably stop it happening when they get round to it, but for now it's just another thing to do so that someone can tick a box.

huckster

My understanding is that the New Style ESA claimant commitment is required because the legislation for this is slightly different to the legislation for the previous version of ESA you were on.  Although ESA have continued to make payments, if no New Style ESA claim was accepted, then it is possible that ESA payments would be stopped and the claim could be closed.

Spoonie_Turtle

huckster said:

My understanding is that the New Style ESA claimant commitment is required because the legislation for this is slightly different to the legislation for the previous version of ESA you were on.  Although ESA have continued to make payments, if no New Style ESA claim was accepted, then it is possible that ESA payments would be stopped and the claim could be closed.

Oh that makes sense of why, when I claimed ESA after I'd already started claiming UC, I also had to accept a claimant commitment (the appointment was over the phone).  Pretty much exactly the same commitment as UC, except obviously without reference to checking a journal.

HillStreetBlues

huckster said:

My understanding is that the New Style ESA claimant commitment is required because the legislation for this is slightly different to the legislation for the previous version of ESA you were on.  Although ESA have continued to make payments, if no New Style ESA claim was accepted, then it is possible that ESA payments would be stopped and the claim could be closed.

 When UC came about the claimant commitment was also added to ESA under the Welfare Reform Act 2012 (Section 57) back in 2013. So anyone from that date on either IR CB /New style could be asked  to agree a CC.
It seems that they never bothered with those already on ESA until the move over to NS ESA

Vates

Thank you all for your help, this helps clear up my confusion. I honestly had no idea that I received contributions-based ESA alongside the Income-based. The phone appointment isn't an issue and will go ahead as planned/booked. Just can't believe I didn't realise about the ESA before now!

Newcad

Vates said:

Just can't believe I didn't realise about the ESA before now!

You are not alone in that respect.

Many ESA claimants who are now migrating to UC are somewhat surprised to find out they were entitled to both CB ESA and IR ESA.

To be fair before the move to UC there was no real reason to differentiate between IR only or CB+IR, unless the claimant came into money, or had a partner who started working, and so lost their entitlement to the IR part.

(In effect that is what happens in a migration - you lose your entitlement to IR ESA because it becomes UC, but any existing entitlement to CB ESA remains as 'New Style ESA' with slight changes to the rules such as the Claimant Commitment).

Robbie64

Vates said:

Thank you all for your help, this helps clear up my confusion. I honestly had no idea that I received contributions-based ESA alongside the Income-based. The phone appointment isn't an issue and will go ahead as planned/booked. Just can't believe I didn't realise about the ESA before now!

One way to tell if you receive conts based ESA alongside the income related ESA is if your benefit increases by £10 for one week around early December: this is because you would have received the £10 Christmas Bonus which is paid to recipients of CB ESA (even if paid alongside IR ESA) and not to ESA claimants whose ESA is wholly income related.