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UC SDP transitional payment ended (for no obvious reason)
Client has been on UC for several years - previously on ESA & HB inc. SDP. TP was awarded and in payt.
In May UC payt. of the TP stopped because “the UC you receive is now higher than the previous benefits you were on”. However, there had been no change in the clients UC award amount and no change in circumstances (apart from annual uprating). No further explanation is provided on the payt. statement or via journal.
Despite repeated requests via journal, via escalation etc no explanation has been provided and UC won’t even confirm the MR made three months ago has been referred for action. MP now involved. Notice before action likely next step.
UC provide no figures to confirm the ‘total legacy amount’. Unfortunately, client has moved since the original award of UC and cannot provide details of the then rent / HB award so making an indicative calculation for comparison has been difficult.
Of course the ending of the TP may be correct - I post this to illustrate the difficulty of being able to obtain the information required to advise client if the decision is correct. For want of a figure ..... the will to live was lost.
I appreciate that you perhaps aren’t looking for a technical response, but the statement that the SDP TP has been removed because “the UC you receive is now higher than the previous benefits you were on” is extremely misleading. The process of SDP TP eroding has nothing to do with the legacy benefits the claimant was getting.
What is supposed to happen is that SDP TP is reduced by the amount of any increase in base UC for whatever reason. So if somebody is single, 24 and gets the standard allowance (£344), LCWRA (£343.63) and the SDP TP (£120), the total UC is £807.63. If they turn 25, they now get a standard allowance of £411.51 and still get the LCWRA of £343.63, but their SDP TP drops to £52.49 to make up the total of £807.63.
(Of course, when the extra £20 uplift is dropped from their award, they don’t get the SDP TP back - it stays at £52.49).
I would guess that the most likely reason for the SDP TP to drop out of an award completely due to erosion is where the HCE is added in to the award either for the first time or following a gap in entitlement to it.
Not that any of this is necessarily helpful in this case…
Elliott - of course. I wonder if the soft wear has been configured to show it that way? One would assume there are claimants whose TP has by now reduced from the appropriate max. A thought now occurs to me that as clients housing costs were not included in first two APs (paid as arrears later) the base UC being used to calc. TP is as paid in 1st AP without HCs (I will do some sums!).
Has anyone seen a payment statement in which the TP is shown as reduced as Elliott outlines?
[ Edited: 24 Sep 2021 at 01:31 pm by Peter Turville ]update on this case - UC have now rre-instated the TP with arrears - but no explanation provided as to why it stopped [computer shrugs shoulders].
Ah of course; it is just one of those arbitrary benefit stoppages. I am sure that the letter of apology will be in the post.
Ah of course; it is just one of those arbitrary benefit stoppages. I am sure that the letter of apology will be in the post.
DWP’s response to client’s MP may reveal more if/when received (shrug my shoulders).
Ah of course; it is just one of those arbitrary benefit stoppages. I am sure that the letter of apology will be in the post.
DWP’s response to client’s MP may reveal more if/when received (shrug my shoulders).
DWP have now replied to MP explaining that “.... it was a technical glitch that had caused the problems with the TP process ...”. “The system was advising colleagues that the TP had stopped due to an increase in benefits, they had no reason to doubt this information .... “. “No decision was made in regard to stopping payments so it would not have been possible to raise a mandatory reconsideration against this and it is the reason why no action was taken [on MR request made]”.
Apparently the glitch was related to ” ... an update [unexplained] on Housing Costs earlier this year.”
How many other claimants have had their TP stopped due to this technical glitch and have not been persistent enough to get DWP to take some action?
DWP have made a consolatory payment to our client.
I suppose they make it sound a little better than just saying that we stopped your benefit because we were told to by a malfunctioning computer program.
Good work - as you say, a victory for persistence.