Covid-related absence from UK

Hello, I wonder if anyone could give their input on this situation? It was posted on another thread but too late to be picked up perhaps.

Our client was in receipt of income-related ESA with the SDP and flew to Pakistan on 12/2/20 to see her mother who had been injured in a fall. She was due to return to the UK on 25/3/21 and notified ESA of the absence. ESA ended after 28 days on 12/3/21.
Cl was not able to return to the UK until 7/6/21. She tried to reclaim ESA and the reclaim was refused. Cl submitted an MR.
The MR notice states that ‘when a claimant goes abroad, the department treats them as having made a new claim on their return and their entitlement to benefit needs to be established for the claim to continue. You returned on 7/6/20.
Claims to benefit link to each other if there is a gap of less than 12 weeks. This would mean a person’s entitlement to benefit would not need to be re-established. In your case, you went abroad from the 12/2/20, then the 29th day was 12/3/20 so your claim closed and then from this date to 7/6/20 (when you returned) exceeds 12 weeks and so the claim you would have made on your return would not have linked to your previous claim’.
There is also some guff about how she should have somehow read the runes, unlike the rest of the world, and known to get an earlier flight home, or somehow procured another earlier flight after lockdown began.

Surely the mention of the linking rules is a red herring? She would only have been able to reclaim irESA on her return if she returned within a month of the claim closing: she could have reclaimed irESA had she returned on her planned date because she would have been prevented from claiming UC as she had been in receipt irESA with the SDP within the last month and SDP gateway still stood for UC. Had she returned out-with that month, she would have had to claim UC anyway.

Cl will not claim UC and is living on her PIP.

Many thanks in advance

I’m not sure there is very much to this. The DWP superseded and ended entitlement once it was apparent that she was going to be abroad for more than 28 days. This was correct. Further entitlement then depended on a new claim. She made what purported to be a new claim for irESA on her return but was precluded from doing so because she would have been able to claim UC as she was not caught by the SDP gateway. That also looks correct.

That was my first thought, just wanted to check I wasn’t missing anything. Thank you for your response.