Hi I have a client who was receiving Income support due to incapable of working. As she did not have enough NI contributions and because of her age she was getting Income Support.

Client later on tried to work and slowly get back to her life, she was working around 6- 8hrs a week at one point she did 15hrs.

Income support have asked her to repay all the income support paid to her including further £315.77 for penalty, total she needs to pay £1368.

I spoke to them saying that :
she have done permitted work higher rate which is for up to 52 weeks as long as she was working in average of for less than 16hrs a week and did not earn more than £88.50pw.

I was told that this is only for incapacity benefit, I again reminded them that she was only claiming IS because she would not been able to claim Incapacity.

I am now confused and dont really see a way of dealing with that, we have a meeting in the next week at the job centre so any help will be highly appreciated.

Regards,
Antonina

If your client was getting income support on the grounds that she was incapable of work, there will need to have been a decision to treat her as capable of work (usually made in relation to her NI credits). If there is no such decision, there needs to be one - i.e. the work was either exempt or it wasn't. If it wasn't exempt, then the basis for the income support claim has gone and, unless she fell within any other prescribed category of person allowed to claim income support, all the income support paid will be overpaid. However, if the work was exempt, the income support will only be affected by earnings received above the earnings disregard appropriate to her

(Brian)

The more generous 52 week disregard for exempt work you are describing applies to incapacity benefit and both versions of employemnt and support allowance, but not to income support. Unfair I know but there it is. There has to be some upside to ESA!

Even for income support, it is only the lack of the higher earnings disregard that matters. The fact of work, if within the exempt work rules, does not of itself disentitle her to income support on the grounds of incaapcity for work. However, as Brian says, anything above the appropriate earnings disregard is deducted from the amount of her income support. The disregard will be £5 if her incapacity is of recent origin, £20 is she is entitled to a disability premium. So if her earnings less the appropriate disregard equal or exceed the amount of her income support, she is not entitled. If it is less, then clearly she is entitled to less. She has thus been overpaid and recoverability seems highly likely, since she will have been instructed that she must notify starting work.

Thank you for all your support. I understand better the situation now, seems like she will have to find way of paying back.

Thank you