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Forum Home  →  Discussion  →  Work capability issues and ESA  →  Thread

Permitted Work, work cycle, avoiding exceeding 16 hours & earnings limits

Mick Quinn
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Welfare rights officer - Northumberland County Council

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Permitted work query folks. Any thoughts gratefully accepted;

Client in sg ESA has been offered 10.5 hrs pw work on min wage.
Only problem is that as part of induction, client has to attend for 4 days in the first week.
This will likely exceed both hours & earnings limits for that week. It’s unclear by how much at this moment.

Looking at ESA Regs 2013, reg 39 (2) allows for weekly aggregations for determining hours worked.
CPAG pg 1011 ‘Permitted Work’ 4th bullet point, …provided you work, on average, for less than 16 hrs pw…  appears to support this approach.

My idea is to argue that if my client attends the 4 days in her first week, then, as long as it averages out less than 16 hours & under £115.50 by the end of the following 4 week period (which would be 5 week period with the first week included) as mentioned in the regs, she meets the conditions under PW.

I will be asking the care manager of the client to assist with the PW 1 form and supply a covering letter explaining the above. Hopefully this should reduce any knee-jerk response from a D/M.

Has anyone had this tested with one of their own cases? As I mentioned any thoughts would also be appreciated.

past caring
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Welfare Rights Adviser - Southwark Law Centre, Peckham

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Will she be paid weekly or monthly?

(Agree your approach is correct anyway, but monthly payment/wage slip would avoid any alarms going off in the first place)

Mick Quinn
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Welfare rights officer - Northumberland County Council

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Monthly mate.

past caring
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Welfare Rights Adviser - Southwark Law Centre, Peckham

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Well there you go then. I’d simply notify ESA of the permitted work at the point when she’s received the first wage slip. This will show both hours and earnings under the limit (because I imagine that hours worked each week will not be separately itemised). Job done.

This isn’t deception because your interpretation is correct - it’s simply taking reasonable steps to avoid the DWP (who I wouldn’t rely on to interpret ‘baguette’ correctly) getting the wrong end of the stick.

And anyway, as we all know, whatever you or the client said now, the DWP will want to see evidence (the wageslip) and will rely primarily on that. So why say anything until the evidence is available?

paulmoorhouse
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Central and South Sussex CAB

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Also check para 41213 ff in DMG.

zoeycorker
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Welfare Rights Unit - Leeds City Council

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I’ve got one of these issues at the moment
a new client of mine has been working for almost the 52 weeks now, for 15 hours per week, however when he was interviewed by a visiting officer towards the end of last year, they have deemed him to be working 16 hours per week and cancelled his claim;
he has a letter from his employer stating he works 15 hours per week and he is paid for 15 hours per week.
however the visiting officer has reported that when the client told him he works roughly 9 - 5 for 2 days a week - this equates to 16 hours as no allowance for lunch times is allowed.
I’m in the process of challenging this but again, wondered what anyone else thinks.
in the meantime he’s been forced to make a new claim - after he has just been assessed and put in support group !

Ruth_T
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Volunteer adviser - Corby Borough Welfare Rights & CAB

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If his lunch breaks are unpaid they should not be included in the hours worked.    Also, if they are in the support group they may undertake PW indefinitely (ie no 52-week limit).

Paul_Treloar_AgeUK
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Information and advice resources - Age UK

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Ruth_T - 25 January 2017 08:15 PM

If his lunch breaks are unpaid they should not be included in the hours worked.    Also, if they are in the support group they may undertake PW indefinitely (ie no 52-week limit).

And indefinite for all from April 2017.