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Forum Home  →  Discussion  →  Work capability issues and ESA  →  Thread

Claming conts-based ESA in full service UC area.

Benny Fitzpatrick
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Welfare Rights Officer, Southway Housing Trust, Manchester

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Cl has come out of a DV situation, following attempted suicide (serious and almost successful). has now been off work for 12 months, contractual sick pay has finished and employer has terminated employment due to ill health. Client’s mental health is extremely fragile and she will NOT under any circs leave her home. She has no access to IT.

Cl meets conts conditions for ESA (cont-based), and currently receives partial HB, but is adamant that she does not want to claim UC. However she is in a full service area.

JCP insist that they cannot accept and process a claim for conts based ESA without a UC claim being submitted simultaneously. Cl is adamant that she will not do this and will not be able to maintain a UC claim due to lack of IT skills. In addition she will require home visits as will not leave home.

I agree UC would be inappropriate for her, but I am banging my head on a brick wall with JCP. Although the staff are sympathetic, they insist there is nothing they can do.

Any suggestions?

Daphne
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They’re supposed to send a paper form when you ring but there seem to be huge problems with it still. However, there’s a form you can download here https://www.rightsnet.org.uk/forums/viewthread/10661/

Just fill it in and send it off - they have to give a decision.

Jon (CANY)
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Welfare benefits - Craven CAB, North Yorkshire

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Complain? Send in a paper claim? We recently asked UC helpline for an ESA claim form. Client has no email address, so they emailed the form to us. See attachment here for the form. NB, the client may still need to attend JCP for verification (and UC sales-pitch…).

Peter Turville
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Welfare rights worker - Oxford Community Work Agency

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We are have similar problems here (6 wks into full service). Whether UC contact centre staff understand ECA(C) claim process appears to be a lottery. DWP will only send out ESA(C) forms by email so claimant requires email address & printer (arguably contrary to UC etc (C&P) Regs. 13 & 15 - and the process seems to be an amalgamation of a telephone & written process in practice).

Difficulties with very vulnerable claimants who can’t complete the claim process or attend the Jobcentre for intitial claim interview - front line agencies resourses just aren’t available to provide this level of support. Issues with DWP safeguarding procedures and failure to make ‘reasonable adjustments’.

I have contacted our DWP Partnership Manager about this

Benny Fitzpatrick
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Welfare Rights Officer, Southway Housing Trust, Manchester

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Case now referred to MP, who has promised to raise it with DWP urgently.

The frustrating thing is, we have completed all the paper work (ESA1UC, bank details etc) but we just need the phone number to arrange the verification home-visit. The impression is that JCP won’t release the number unless Client claims UC.

It is ridiculous that a claimant with an entitlement to cont based benefits is forced into making a UC claim against their will, in order to successfully claim the correct benefit. Instead of being able to simply claim conts based benefits in the first place.

Jon (CANY)
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Welfare benefits - Craven CAB, North Yorkshire

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I don’t know if this is still the case, but the problem might be that there is apparently no appointment-booking mechanism for c-ESA claims, only for UC claims. So as I understand it, the workaround the staff are meant to be aware of is: register a dummy UC claim, which allows a local JCP verification appointment to be set. The appointment is then used for the contributory benefit claim, and the UC claim is hopefully removed from the system by the work coach or whoever..

Daphne
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I’ll raise this via stakeholders…we have before and i thought things had improved but apparently not!

Benny Fitzpatrick
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Welfare Rights Officer, Southway Housing Trust, Manchester

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Update on this case:

JCP referred the case to the Visiting Team, who promptly refused to visit, stating that it was “the wrong type of referral”. Cue back to the merry go round of trying to get the cont-based ESA claim accepted. JCP now saying if she claims independently of UC she will lose her HB and CTC, therefore they will not accept ESA claim independently of UC claim, regardless of whether the paper side of the claim is completed. We are back to square one!

This is an extremely vulnerable and volatile client, who is adamant that she doesn’t want to claim UC at this stage and who is still at risk of attempting suicide. It is absolutely unacceptable that she is essentially being forced to claim a benefit she doesn’t want, in order to be allowed to claim the benefit she is actually entitled to. For all their talk of wanting to help clients to claim, make the new system work etc, it seems JCP are unable to get away from the time honoured practices of the “telephone run-around”, refusal to allow for client’s difficulties, conflicting information from whoever one speaks to, etc, etc!

HB Anorak
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Benefits consultant/trainer - hbanorak.co.uk, East London

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I am sure you are on top of this side of it Benny, but for the avoidance of doubt make sure you keep the Council in the loop - they need to understand that the only thing happening to her HB should be an increase up to max entitlement due to reduction in income.  You will find some councils who (wrongly) proactively end HB and instruct claimants to claim UC: need to make sure the Council doesn’t do anything like that in this case.

Benny Fitzpatrick
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Welfare Rights Officer, Southway Housing Trust, Manchester

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LA are currently paying HB based on nil income. I am keeping them up to date, don’t worry.