ESA To UC

hatton12

A friend of mine has been on ESA contribution based support group for about 2 years. Has no housing costs as owns her own house. She has just come aware that she can claim UC.

If she claims UC can she transfer her ESA to UC and switch to LCWRA?

Rubyroobs

As long as she does not have savings in excess of 16k she can claim UC. The contributions based ESA would continue to be paid fortnightly separately to the Uc but deducted in full from UC. As she is in the support group of ESA she should have the LCWRA element included on her Uc claim. I think it works out at around £200 per month increase in benefits overall unless she has savings over 6k.

hatton12

Rubyroobs said:

As long as she does not have savings in excess of 16k she can claim UC. The contributions based ESA would continue to be paid fortnightly separately to the Uc but deducted in full from UC. As she is in the support group of ESA she should have the LCWRA element included on her Uc claim. I think it works out at around £200 per month increase in benefits overall unless she has savings over 6k.

Why would ESA still be paid alongside UC? Can't ESA be transferred over to UC under regulation 19 and then only recieve 1 payment from UC rather than 2 payments.

Yes she dies have savings above £16k but the savings are in a Trust. 

KxMx

Contribution based ESA is outside of the UC system, it's Income Related that gets transferred. 

She should get advice on whether the money in trust can be disregarded as counting as capital or income for UC purposes. 

https://advicefinder.turn2us.org.uk/

If eligible LCWRA & Standard Allowance pays £823.41 for a single person over 25.

£609.05 will be deducted for the ESA (as an average for one month's ESA, as ESA is a weekly benefit and there are 4.3 weeks in a month), leaving £214.36 payable in UC.

Robbie64

Regs 19 applies to people who are migrating to UC from income related ESA and is the basis for people going through the migration process to be able to transfer over LCWRA status without having to undergo another work capability assessment prior to LCWRA being added to UC. If only conts based ESA is in payment then there's no need for this. The person simply claims UC and the LCWRA status in ESA should be transferred to UC.

ESA will remain in payment unless there's a change of circumstances e,g, in the persons LCWRA status or capital or the person willingly gives up the ESA claim. I would never recommend doing the latter.

hatton12

Robbie64 said:

Regs 19 applies to people who are migrating to UC from income related ESA and is the basis for people going through the migration process to be able to transfer over LCWRA status without having to undergo another work capability assessment prior to LCWRA being added to UC. If only conts based ESA is in payment then there's no need for this. The person simply claims UC and the LCWRA status in ESA should be transferred to UC.

ESA will remain in payment unless there's a change of circumstances e,g, in the persons LCWRA status or capital or the person willingly gives up the ESA claim. I would never recommend doing the latter.

If the person does willingly stop ESA contribution. Will they have to apply for the LCWRA again through UC?

Or if re assessed by ESA and the outcome being no entitlement to the support group. What will happen to UC?

When applying for UC is the criteria same as ESA support group don't need to look for work or attend the job centre?

Robbie64

The criteria for LCWRA UC is the same as Support Group ESA, including no need to look for work or attending the job centre for work focussed reviews.

I'm not sure why the person would want to stop ESA but it's important the person claims UC and gets the LCWRA status established before stopping ESA. You need the Support Group status in ESA to transfer across to UC. You can't do this if you give up the ESA claim prior to claiming UC. You'd have to go through the whole work capability process again and would have to live for many months on basic UC with no LCWRA element in payment.

Once the person has claimed UC then its a personal choice of whether to continue with the ESA + UC claims or just the UC claim. The overall amount of money received will be the same each month.

Is there a pressing reason why the person wants to stop the ESA claim? Or does she think she can only get UC if ESA isn't in payment? The conts based ESA can continue in payment for as long as the person remains in the Support Group without all the upheaval of getting it stopped as the person can claim UC alongside ESA anyway.

hatton12

Robbie64 said:

The criteria for LCWRA UC is the same as Support Group ESA, including no need to look for work or attending the job centre for work focussed reviews.

I'm not sure why the person would want to stop ESA but it's important the person claims UC and gets the LCWRA status established before stopping ESA. You need the Support Group status in ESA to transfer across to UC. You can't do this if you give up the ESA claim prior to claiming UC. You'd have to go through the whole work capability process again and would have to live for many months on basic UC with no LCWRA element in payment.

Once the person has claimed UC then its a personal choice of whether to continue with the ESA + UC claims or just the UC claim. The overall amount of money received will be the same each month.

Is there a pressing reason why the person wants to stop the ESA claim? Or does she think she can only get UC if ESA isn't in payment? The conts based ESA can continue in payment for as long as the person remains in the Support Group without all the upheaval of getting it stopped as the person can claim UC alongside ESA anyway.

She thinks it will be easier to deal with 1 benefit than dealing with 2.

Robbie64

hatton12 said:

Robbie64 said:

The criteria for LCWRA UC is the same as Support Group ESA, including no need to look for work or attending the job centre for work focussed reviews.

I'm not sure why the person would want to stop ESA but it's important the person claims UC and gets the LCWRA status established before stopping ESA. You need the Support Group status in ESA to transfer across to UC. You can't do this if you give up the ESA claim prior to claiming UC. You'd have to go through the whole work capability process again and would have to live for many months on basic UC with no LCWRA element in payment.

Once the person has claimed UC then its a personal choice of whether to continue with the ESA + UC claims or just the UC claim. The overall amount of money received will be the same each month.

Is there a pressing reason why the person wants to stop the ESA claim? Or does she think she can only get UC if ESA isn't in payment? The conts based ESA can continue in payment for as long as the person remains in the Support Group without all the upheaval of getting it stopped as the person can claim UC alongside ESA anyway.

She thinks it will be easier to deal with 1 benefit than dealing with 2.

If she wishes to cancel the ESA then she must wait until UC is in payment before doing so. All she needs to do is phone ESA and ask for the claim to be closed. Her UC claim should be automatically adjusted but she should add a note to her Journal and send it to the Payments option, which will direct the message to the Case Manager. A word of caution though: if her circumstances changed which meant she didn't qualify for UC (such as capital exceeding £16k) then she won't be able to go back to her ESA claim.

Spoonie_Turtle

As someone who claims both I can honestly say it makes zero difference.  I've had one phone call in the entirety of my ESA claim, it's UC that takes more 'dealing with'.

Maybe she could be persuaded to wait a month or two of claiming both and then make her decision.  Because as above, if her circumstances change so she's no longer eligible for UC, if she's given up her ESA claim she'll be left with no financial support whatsoever.