One of my clients might have to give up work for health reasons. His wife will continue to work for now, so there would not be any entitlement to IS and he does not meet NI contributions conditions for IB until 2009.

I would have normally advised him to claim NI credits for incapacity now, as he might be able to benefit from disability premium in the future. Does anyone know whether the TP for existing claimants extends to (future) right to DP for IS/HB etc?

(Apologies in case this is really obvious, but I have not had my ESA training yet)

Can't see how it would? Transitional protection is in connection with not losing any money at the point of change essentially, not about protecting entitlement to particular components of any benefit. So my guess would be that there would be no protection in the case that you describe.

Paul, you're probably right.

I was hoping that - by the time he'll claim income support, the provisions about remain a prescribed person for IS as a person incapable of work under para 7 of Sched 1B would stay the same and continue to apply to him, and would then qualify for the premium under para 12 Sched 2 once he has been incapable for 364 days.

But I suppose they can stipulate that para 12 only continues to apply for those who have already been incap for 364 days on the ESA start date, or something along those lines.

Do you know when the legislation for ESA and TP will be out ?

We've been told that the primary regulations should be out by the end of this month, and the amending/consequential regs by around April time.

Thanks

However, I understand that the commencement date will not be until October. Or has that changed?

No, the intended date of introduction of ESA is still October 2008 as far as we know. We had a meeting with officials last month and they seemed confident that everything would be in place by then.