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Forum Home  →  Discussion  →  Benefits for older people  →  Thread

Severe Disability Premium

ejm30
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Community Team - Hospice Devon

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Client in receipt of AA -Special Rules and Pension Credit.
PC have requested that she complete a SDP form.
Lives with her daughter (adult) and grandson - receiving Universal Credit and Child Benefit.
Home is HA and rented. Daughter contributes to rent. Not on the tenancy agreement.
I have read the regs and my understanding is that this living arrangement means that she would not be eligible for SDP.

If this is so - can someone explain the rationale of this. What is it about living with other family membes that negates you eligibility for SDP?
Many thanks in advance.

Peter Turville
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Welfare rights worker - Oxford Community Work Agency

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ejm30 - 21 August 2019 10:43 AM

Client in receipt of AA -Special Rules and Pension Credit.
PC have requested that she complete a SDP form.
Lives with her daughter (adult) and grandson - receiving Universal Credit and Child Benefit.
Home is HA and rented. Daughter contributes to rent. Not on the tenancy agreement.
I have read the regs and my understanding is that this living arrangement means that she would not be eligible for SDP.

If this is so - can someone explain the rationale of this. What is it about living with other family members that negates you eligibility for SDP?
Many thanks in advance.

The concept of the SDP is that it recognises the additional cost of living alone with a disability but without a carer (whether they live with the claimant or elsewhere). Therefore your claimant cannot qualify for an SDP because there is another adult living in her household (she is not living alone - unless her daughter is herself in receipt of a relevant disability benefit in which case she would not count as another adult in the household). Similarly if her daughter was in receipt of Carer’s Allowance for looking after her mother but lived elsewhere your client would not qualify for a SDP - because she has a carer).

SDP was originally introduced into Income Support as an amendment to the legislation by the House of Lords in order to ‘compensate’ single severely disabled claimants living alone who would be worse off as a result of being transferred from Supplementary Benefit to IS. It was controversial at the time and was subject to extensive test cases in the higher courts on how it applied in practice.  In other words as a ‘bolt on’ to the original scheme it could be argued it has never fitted neatly into means tested benefits as a concept or in application.

Paul_Treloar_AgeUK
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Information and advice resources - Age UK

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Yes, the Severe Disability Premium (SDP) pays an equivalent amount to Carer’s Allowance (CA), hence why entitlement is linked to no-one else receiving CA for looking after you.

As Peter notes, the presence of an adult daughter would usually mean the SDP isn’t payable, unless the daughter meets certain criteria herself but maybe the Pension Servcie are simply being thorough to make sure this is the case (which I would be pleased to hear as too often, these additional payments are completely missed out, as in a case we’re currently advising on).

For more about SDP entitlement, see section 4.1 of our Pension Credit factsheet.

Julie Stuart
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Macmillan benefits adviser - Edinburgh Welfare Rights Service

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Broadly, if you have someone who is not disabled around the house they can help out with things that the disabled might have to pay for.  Examples include getting shopping delivered, help with housework.  These aren’t things you get the disability benefit itself for but because of your disability have a cost that wouldn’t apply to someone without it.

Of course, not all non-dependants will help out and not all disabled people will have extra costs but this is my now very vague memory of why the premium was put into the system for Income Support and Housing Benefit and then included in PC later.

Va1der
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Welfare Rights Officer with SWAMP Glasgow

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For that matter, there is nothing stopping the daughter claiming Carer’s Allowance (provided she meets the requirements). She would only get a Carer’s element in her UC, as it would count CA as income pound for pound. It would also reduce the work search requirements in her UC.

Ianb
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Macmillan benefits team, Citizens Advice Bristol

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Va1der - 22 August 2019 12:41 PM

For that matter, there is nothing stopping the daughter claiming Carer’s Allowance (provided she meets the requirements). She would only get a Carer’s element in her UC, as it would count CA as income pound for pound. It would also reduce the work search requirements in her UC.

She doesn’t need to claim Carer’s Allowance to get carer element in her UC. She simply needs to state that she is a carer for 35 hours or more of a person receiving a qualifying benefit. If she has any earnings she doesn’t have to worry about breaching the CA limit because there is no limit for the carer element of UC.

ejm30
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Community Team - Hospice Devon

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Many thanks all - really helpful.
Daughter has a 6 month old baby so requirement to work does not apply I imagine.
Thanks again.