transitional protection

I have a client who was homeless living in a b&b and was on legacy benefits he moved from the b&b before the housing benefit went through.  He moved to a friends house due to his health he was offered a council property but to enable him to claim for his rent to be paid he needed to claim universal credit.  The client chose to move over before he signed for the property as we did not know when this would be and he did not want to go through the 5 week assessment period with no money.

We asked for transitional protection as he got a lot of elements to his esa legacy benefits such as guaranteed disabled income guarantee,  extra money because you are are severe disability, extra money because you are in the work related activity group and his personal element.

UC protected the first payment month then because he had the housing element they took the extra money away saying he is on more money now than he was before

How are people supposed to know the intricacies of the rules he has lost about £154 a month
it seems unfair that these rules are applied to the determent of vulnerable people
we have appealed it are there any cases where this has been successful i have approached CAB but they say there is nothing they can do they called it erosion

Could you clarify when what happened, please?

When he claimed HB.
When he moved to his friend’s house (and did he end his tempAcc tenancy at that time - i.e. did he move in with a friend without reporting it).
When the tenancy for the new property started and when he moved in.
When he claimed UC.

I also think your muddling your terminology a bit, and you might find this useful for the future: Transitional protection is not something you ‘ask for’ - clients are either entitled to it or not (though at times it will involve a challenge to have them included).

The support component in ESA is not part of any transitional element - having the SG status on moving to UC simply means they will be treated as having LCWRA for UC purposes.
The Enhanced Disability Premium (EDP) (what you refer to as the ‘guaranteed disabled income guarantee’) is not currently part of transitional protection - though I think the challenge to that was successful and we’re waiting for it to be implemented(?)
The Severe Disability Premium (SDP) and the SDP transitional element is at the crux of your client’s issues. This TPE *is* subject to what’s called erosion - meaning that any increase to their UC award (bar a few) will erode this by an equal amount. Inclusion of a Housing Costs Element AFTER the first UC assessment period will indeed cause erosion of the SDPTPE. Hence why the timeline of your client’s claims is important.