UC and periods of sickness

Hi,

we have had full service for approx. 2 weeks and im just trying to get to grips with periods of sickness.

We have a lot of tenants moving to us from other local authorities and the need to make a new HB claim triggers a UC claim. But if the tenant is claiming ESA, then this will stop the award. Am I right in thinking that this could lead to tenants being significantly worse off, as could go from being on ESA with SG for example, to the standard rate until they have been assessed again under UC and have completed the equivalent WCA? or is the fact that they were on ESA prior to the UC claim taken in to account?

Also, had a tenant yesterday who is on ESA and has just taken up his first tenancy and so needed to claim UC to get help towards his rent. He sent his sick note to ESA but when we made his UCV online claim, it asks if he has a sick note and the dates etc. So is this likely to lead to an increase in people needing to get a)duplicate sicknotes and b) people who have been long term sick needing to get sicknotes for the first time in a long time, which will ultimately put pressure on GP surgeries etc?

Regulation 19 of the Universal Credit (Transitional Provisions) Regulations 2014 allows the wrag group to be carried onto uc.

I think what is happening in practice is as you describe Advisor_1; the UC claim asks you to tick ‘have you got a sick note’ Yes/No, and if you tick ‘yes’ it wants all the details entering.  If you tick ‘No’ it tells you to go and get one.

Although LCW / LCWRA should ‘carry over’ via DWP’s own internal procedures, in practice it seems that the Jobcentre Work Coach is requiring you to provide a sicknote, and in some cases are treating you as ‘full conditionality’ with ‘discretionary’ easements rather than as a different ‘conditionality’ status.

I think we need more clarity regarding the process that should occur where LCW/LCWRA are already established, or are in process of being considered within ESA system.  Also the limitations of the online UC claim need flagging up to DWP as there is no opportunity to tell them any of this, unless you get the claim up and running and then use a journal entry, but this may not be a straightforwardly obvious way of flagging this up.

Thanks. So in cases where there there is an ESA case, would there still be a requirement to get a sicknote? Or will their existing sicknote information be pulled across to the UC claim internally?

Advisor_1 - 21 February 2017 02:17 PM

Thanks. So in cases where there there is an ESA case, would there still be a requirement to get a sicknote? Or will their existing sicknote information be pulled across to the UC claim internally?

in the 1 case i had i think i wrote a letter and they moved the wrag onto the uc claim but that was post an appeal on the original esa wca failure.

I’ll flag this up us an issue with the stakeholder’s group…