Moving to supported housing & UC

My client receives ESA (national insurance related - support group) & PIP daily living lower rate. He is moving within the same borough to supported accommodation. I phoned jobcentreplus, who said he needed to ring them on the day of his move,  to give them his new address and that he may need to claim Universal Credit when he moves - even though he will be claiming housing benefit for his accommodation.

I just want to check if the phone call to tell jobcentre about the new address might trigger UC and if there is any way to avoid a transfer to UC?

I’ll leave others who get more annoyed by the wrongness of “UC triggers” to deal with that point.

If the client is currently getting HB and is moving within the same authority then they can stay on HB regardless of whether it’s specified or exempt accommodation (as long as there’s no gap).

I am curious about why the client doesn’t want to move onto UC? If they’re nsESA with SG then aren’t they going to be better off with UC LCWRA?

Edit: sorry, I haven’t directly addressed your question - the answer is no, a change of address for nsESA via JCP will not do anything other than changing the address on the ESA claim. Even if the client asked to be put on UC during that call, I would expect them to be directed to make a claim online (even if they asked to make a telephone based claim).

A few things here: Firstly, if this is exempt housing they won’t be permitted to claim UC for housing costs regardless - it will be HB. Whether he changes borough is irrelevant.

Second, you’ve said the ESA is contribution based, but not whether it is old-style or new-style. In the latter case, likely no negative impact of claiming UC, like Timothy already said.

You’ve said PIP DL ‘low rate’ I assume that means standard rate (and not low rate DLA Care). If the cbESA is in fact old-style they might be entitled to the SDP and likely better off having an irESA top-up.

As far as ‘triggering’ goes - I’m not annoyed at the usage here 😊  Phoning UC is indeed one of the ways you could (accidentally) claim UC and thereby force a no-return stop of legacy benefits.
UC claims are most often ‘triggered’ by incompetent DWP staff who give incorrect advice. Technically, the only trigger is the act of claiming UC either by phone or online - which the claimant should be in control of themselves.