April 2017 changes to WRAC

In addition to Julia’s question, please can someone confirm if “treated as made before 03/04/2017” means in practice an award of backdated ESA from before that date? E.g., if someone was to make a claim on 01/07/2017 and successfully request 3 months backdating.

Elliott S - 06 March 2017 10:01 AM

In addition to Julia’s question, please can someone confirm if “treated as made before 03/04/2017” means in practice an award of backdated ESA from before that date? E.g., if someone was to make a claim on 01/07/2017 and successfully request 3 months backdating.

That’s how I understand it - Schedule 2 of the amendment regulations taking away the WRAC, provides for savings and transitional protection from the cuts, including paragraph 5 - ‘Claimants where their award becomes payable before 3rd April 2017’ - this covers cases where three months backdating takes claim back to before 3 April 2017. Also applies if assessment period is deemed to have started before 3 April (paragraph 6).

Thanks stuart.

Julia T - 06 March 2017 09:30 AM

Does anyone know if under 25s will still go on to the over 25s rate of the personal allowance once they’ve been found to have LCW? That would make them still better off on ESA than JSA so my instinct tells me that must be being changed too, but I haven’t found anything about it.

Bad news here - this group has not been saved from further cuts as I see it - the amendment regulations taking away the WRAC also remove the higher personal allowance payment rate for main phase under 25s.  Regulation 2(4) of those regulations do this by taking away reference to the WRAC in the main ESA regulations setting out prescribed amounts for single people. Higher payment rate will now only apply to under 25s in support group when these changes come in.

Thanks Stuart -  bad news indeed but not unexpected

So if a UC/ESA claim stops and starts again they would lose the WRAC or could linking rules apply?
What about cases that are reviewed? Will they be treating that as a new decision and removing the WRAC or maintaining what they already have (assuming they’re not found fit for work).

Transitional protection rules do protect WRAC beyond April for breaks in ESA claims with linked periods of LCW and various reviews/appeals for both universal credit and ESA.  Those rules are summarised in rightsnet news story Removal of the ESA work-related activity component and universal credit limited capability for work element.

DWP have also added details to gov.uk today for universal credit Changes to limited capability for work payments in universal credit

stuart - 06 March 2017 10:46 AM

Bad news here - this group has not been saved from further cuts as I see it - the amendment regulations taking away the WRAC also remove the higher personal allowance payment rate for main phase under 25s.  Regulation 2(4) of those regulations do this by taking away reference to the WRAC in the main ESA regulations setting out prescribed amounts for single people. Higher payment rate will now only apply to under 25s in support group when these changes come in.

Thanks Stuart, I was unaware of this part. Further to this and possibly should be in HB thread, but how does this affect non dep deductions for under 25s when they are placed in WRAG - Given they are no longer in assessment phase will a non dep deduction still apply at this point despite the fact their benefit is no longer increasing, as there would be no deduction on JSA for this age group.