ESA tribunal decision not implemented by UC

The client was refused ESA, appealed and while waiting claimed UC (on the advice of the JCP)  He won the appeal and the decision notice dated November 21st 2016 places him in the support group. Client says he took this to the JCP and asked to be put back on ESA. He could not be but he was assured that the decision would be implemented in UC and he would be no worse off.

Now ie 18mths later, he has complained that he was much worse off—and indeed so. Looking back through his journal the payments history only goes back to July 2017 but all that time he and his wife were receiving only the basic standard couple rate.

He says he has taken the FTT decision to the JCP “many times” but nothing has been done. His English is not good so he may not have been able to explain.

UC don’t seem to recognise the concept of official error. We have written a request for a revision on his journal and I assume they will refuse, MR etc, Tribunal again.

I guess I should I be asking for a UC50 to cover him from now on while we argue about the past? Am I thinking along the right lines for the ESA decision? it seems never to have been implemented in UC.

Hi Sally - yes he should have had the appropriate element included in his UC from the start under reg 19 of the UC (Transitional provisions) Regs 2014 so an anytime revision on the basis of official error is the way to go I think.

Let me know if you have a problem as it’s something we’ve been raising via the stakeholder forum and directly with Neil Couling.

There’s lots more about it in this thread - https://www.rightsnet.org.uk/forums/viewthread/11307/

Was the tribunal decision implemented in ESA? He must have been owed some support component ESA arrears as well as UC arrears, unless he somehow moved on to UC before the ESA assessment phase ended. If the ESA award was not amended, then it may be harder for UC to accept that the support element should carry through?

If UC can fail to have an adequate mechanism to pick up someone’s support group status from a live ESA claim (which they still do), then I could imagine it’s even more difficult for them to apply support group status when the ESA claim has closed, and the SG decision has been made after the fact by a tribunal. In any case, DWP won’t have much experience of dealing with UC tribunal decisions. If the FTT decision wasn’t appealed by DWP, it could be appropriate to send a copy to Caxton House and ask why it isn’t being implemented? See Claire’s reply to this thread:
https://www.rightsnet.org.uk/forums/viewthread/9948/

Thank you, he should have had some sort of backdated ESA award, shouldn’t he. That’s another way to tackle it from here and find out what ESA did as a consequence of this decision.  He should be due backdating as you say.

Does anyone know why the UC payment record only goes back to July 2017? Do they delete the history? He says that when he got the FTT decision he took it to the JCP and asked to go back on ESA and they told him that he couldn’t but it would be implemented in UC. Which suggests he was on UC by November 2016.

Just a guess: he was on Live UC in 2016, and was moved on to Digital UC by 2017..? The two systems don’t speak to each other.

He’s married and severely disabled. Don’t those things preclude Live Service?

Yes, that wouldn’t make sense, sorry. I was thinking that Southwark was an early adopter of UC for everyone, but I guess it was Digital right from the start? This page suggests so anyway:
https://www.peabody.org.uk/news-views/2015/nov/universal-credit-goes-digital