backdating elements

Please tell me if im waffling but I was asked a question about awards of benefits (other than UC) which are backdated.

For example, if someone claims Carers allowance and the claim takes 8 weeks to process, im guessing that any payment of arrears would be treated as income in the assessment period in which it was received. There would also be a carers element added to that assessment period. However, there would only be one carers element even though there would be 8 weeks worth of income. Obviously, this is quite different to the legacy system as income/premiums offset each other.

The same I guess would be true of new awards of PIP and waiting for WCA to get disability elements. There would be no income to take into account, but people will still lose out on backdated premiums which they would have received under the legacy system (ie SDPs etc)l

We are not in a full service area so im just thinking ahead really and would welcome any comments from people in UC areas

thank you

I would think a backdated lump sum of CA (or other benefits) should be treated as capital rather than income. However, unlike for the ‘legacy’ MTBs there is no disregard of CA (and much more limited list of those which are) for 52 weeks (see handbook p352 - 353).

Elements can be backdated (handbook p1288) and any lump sum of UC which results should be treated as capital and ignored for 52 weeks (see above ref). However, for the carer element of UC there should not be any requirement to have an actual award of CA to get it - claimant only has to meet the CA conditions but not actually have an award (handbook p248 - although yet to establish how the UC IT handles this, especially where there may be joint carers who are a couple and one or both has LCW as well).

that’s very clear thank you (and better than I had thought).  I haven’t had hardly any UC queries as yet but im sure they will come thick and fast once we are full service.