Hi,

I have had a couple of clients recently who have been coming off IS and making a claim for ESA (one failed IFW appeal and one non-attendance at a medical reclaiming).

On both occasions clients have been advised hat their claims for ESA cannot be taken as the Claims Helpline computer shows their claim for IS is still live. A call to IS confirms that the claim has been closed.

Has anyone else had this problem? I'm trying to brew up a letter because I don't think they should be refusing to take claims - apart from anything else a claimant is allowed to claim up to 3m in advance and if they want to refuse on the grounds that IS is in payment a DM should be doing it.

Sue

Mon 07-Sep-09 12:43 PM by shawn

(Edited to shorten link)

I've come across something similiar today and I suspect it might be related to this Rightsnet news story on 01/09:

Continuing entitlement to income support after introduction of ESA where award made on the grounds of disability

It's worth having a good read of the guidance - the implications are significant and could make something of a mockery of the introduction of ESA.

Does anyone have an ear to the ground to know what they are going to do in these scenarios. I have a few who have finished SSP and been told that their ESA claims have been withdrawn with no other instructions. Do they need to make late claims for ICB? Can their ESA claim be taken as a claim for ICB ( as should be the case in my opinion) ? Are they entitled to IS only to replace the SSP?

For my client, I intend to pursue the matter along the lines that the claim for ESA should have been treated as a supersession of the IS claim on the grounds that the 'prescribed category of person' has changed.

For your, I would agree that the ESA claim should have been treated as an IB claim as per the ESA(TP) regs.

I've been wondering how this came about and the best I can come up with is that the WRA didn't revoke the 'disability' provisions in the 'prescribed category of person' in schedule 1B IS regs and since the TP regs only refer to new claims when disapplying the 'disability provisions', then existing claims are straightforward changes of circs and the old schedule 1B exists in it's entirety.

It also seems that in certain situations new claims for IB could be made, and I don't mean via linking rules.

For example if a person claims IS as a carer, then becomes sick and has enough NI conts to claim IB they would be able to claim IB even if the period of incapacity began long after October 08. The key is that they were (however briefly) entitled to IS, and once you are on IS no new claim needs to be made to get IB or IB credits.

So just a week on IS would be a magic route to a new IB claim, all you would need is a friend to claim DLA so you could claim as their carer whilst they were awaiting the DLA decision, by the time they get turned down you would have your IB claim.

Have I got this right? Surely it can't be this illogical.

This would appear to be the case... And yes, it most certainly can be that illogical!!

Is this the sort of thing that you mean?

Customer tried to claim ESA while still in hospital but this was not accepted because a previous claim for JSA was still "open".
Customer was asked to contact the "paying office" to get them to take the claim off the system but when he did, he was advised that there was no claim to remove. He was going around in circles.
In this case the customer got a job before the JSA claim was processed.
Customer now, finally, has a "live" ESA claim. We intend to complain once the claim is up and running.