SDP included in TE even though not in payment with ESA?

Newcad

A question for those more knowledgeable about TE calculations than I am.

TL;DR: Could a standard migration TE be calculated to include an amount for SDP even if that SDP was not actually in payment?

ie. Would the calculation include an entitlement for SDP whether in payment or not?

Long version - but I want to give as much of the circumstances as I can.

I've been helping an acquaintance who has an overpayment of SDP in her previous ESA, unfortunately now I won't see her again until at least the 19th, so a week and a half away.

She was getting SDP however CA started being claimed for her but ESA was not informed for a couple of years; July 2019 to Jan 2022.

She was paying back by deduction from ESA, but when she migrated to UC the repayments weren't taken for the first 3 AP's and she asked me if it was right that deductions should be being taken again now (her 4th AP).
I reassured her that it's correct and is what happens when you migrate, the deduction takes a bit of time to catch up.

She had kept all her paperwork and so I worked out what the OP should have been, which tallied with what the DWP said. (within 10 weeks which was probably when the CA claimer was in hospital, see below).

She is actually paying back from UC at less than 15% deduction now, having already queried it at the jobcentre* and negotiated a lower repayment before talking to me.
So all well and good as far as that goes.

*Things are a bit complicated in that she now has NS ESA as well as UC, she has MH issues and has a telephone/jobcentre UC claim, so no access to her journal, she also has two-per-month UC payments.

However, and now getting to the reason for my query, looking later at what we had discussed I started to question a few things in my mind.

The person claiming CA had gone into hospital, and that appears to be when the CA ended and ESA had noticed the overpayment situation. (The CA claimer deceased, I'm not sure if it was before or after the 12 weeks CA allowed in hospital).

I need to double check with my acquaintance when I see her in a week or so, but I don't recall seeing from her paperwork that an SDP had been reinstated once the CA was no longer being claimed. (TBH at the time I was only looking at the overpayment period not what happened afterwards).
She wouldn't have known that she would need to tell ESA about that C-of-C, just like she didn't know to tell them when CA was first claimed.

If that is the case then the DWP will owe her more in underpayment of SDP than she still owes on the overpayment.

The one thing that makes me question whether SDP had actually been reinstated but I hadn't noticed it is that she has a TE included in her UC.

There are no housing costs or children involved, as far as I am aware before migration she only had PIP and ESA, so it's just a migration from ESA SG to UC and I can't see where a TE would arise unless SDP had been included in the TE calculation (whether actually in payment or not).

Hence my question regarding whether an entitlement to SDP may have been included in the TE calculation even if it were not actually in payment.

As I say I won't see her again for a week or two so I'm trying to get the possibilities straight in my mind before then, so that I can ask her the right questions and ask her to bring the necessary paperwork for me to look at again.

(And if I'm right then we have the fun task of getting the SDP added to the now closed IR ESA and backpaid after wiping out the remaining overpayment, I know that that can still be done at this stage).

Thanks for reading all that.

Robbie64

The calculation for the TE should be based on what was in payment at the time of migration, so if no SDP was included in ESA-IR at that point, it shouldn't be included when calculating the TE.

If SDP needs to be once again included in a now-closed ESA-IR claim then the TE should be recalculated after the ESA-IR amount has been revised.

HillStreetBlues

It does seem that when migrating the system reported that SDP was payable, as I can't think of any other reason TP would occur without that premium in that situation.

Newcad

Thanks for your replies, which conform what I was thinking

Robbie64 said:

The calculation for the TE should be based on what was in payment at the time of migration, so if no SDP was included in ESA-IR at that point, it shouldn't be included when calculating the TE.

The operative words there being 'should' and 'shouldn't'.

It is puzzling, and I may have missed something in her paperwork, as I say I was concentrating on the overpayment and not the migration to UC, but I did notice the TE on the UC statements that she had.
(Paper statements being one advantage of a non-journal claim perhaps?).

However I'm sure we are all aware that there is a potential ticking time bomb with the number of TE calculations that the DWP are seen to be getting wrong.
eg. https://www.rightsnet.org.uk/forums/viewthread/21411/
(Fuel for a future LEAP perhaps? Maybe in 8-10 years or so after the errors like the IB>ESA migration LEAP was).

So all in all I think that I need to talk to her again regarding whether her SDP had been reinstated or not, or whether there might be any other reason for a TE, and then go from there.

Thanks again.