Housing Costs in ESA

I’m really struggling to understand this one and I would be grateful for any thoughts;

The claimant is entitled to both IR ESA and CB ESA but because of other income they are only entitled to IR ESA in respect of housing costs.

The DWP are saying that they can no longer pay the housing costs direct to the lender as this would mean that the claimant would no longer be entitled to any actual payment of IR ESA and therefore their entitlement to IR ESA would end,and with it the entitlement to housing costs. They resolved this by paying the Housing Costs to the claimant in their weekly payment of IR ESA.

I admit that I am rather baffled by this, surely this is one single ESA claim made of two parts, CB & IR, and the entitlement to IR ESA is arrived at from the usual calculations, not where the money is sent to?

that sounds like a lot of nonsense to me as well

Jol - 12 January 2016 12:52 PM

I have vague memories that something like this used to happen with IS, and the DWP got around it by paying 10p of IS to the claimant and the rest to the lender, because their systems couldn’t cope with a claim that wasn’t in payment, at least in part, directly to the claimant. But it could have been a particularly boring dream. Anyone else remember it?

Now you mention it I remember this as well but I am not sure if it transferred to ESA - has anyone seenm one of these ‘nominal payments’ on an ESA letter?

I came across a similar scenario a few years back. I can’t remember the ins nd outs but I know that for some reason we really wanted the housing costs to be paid direct to the lender but the DWP was insistent that they had to be paid to client because of the interaction between CB & IR ESA. I know I checked the regs and the DMG and came to the conclusion they were correct but I can’t remember the details. If I can remember who the client was I will check it out and reply in more detail.