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can EEA national claim pension from EU country and also get HB in the UK?
If she claims:
(1) Any ongoing payments of the pension will be taken account in full against her UC. If five years of the pension is £10,000, then we assume that we are looking at something like £170 per month - so she will still get some UC.
(2) Any backdated lump sum will probably be treated as capital. So if she receives £10k, that will probably mean that she gets her UC reduced going forward as it will be over £6k. (I am assuming that your client doesn’t have any other income or capital). This also pre-supposes that it is possible to backdate the pension claim for 5 years which may or may not be true depending on local laws.
(3) The DWP might try to argue that there is an overpayment of JSA and/or UC - either because there is a “notional income” which she didn’t claim over those five years or by trying to apply the capital sum as income for the periods for which it would have been paid if it were paid in time. Whether any JSA overpayment would be recoverable is another matter. I am somewhat doubtful that they would try this. It would be worth appealing.
It seems unlikely that this would nil her JSA entitlement completely, so I don’t think that there would be any issue with HB in this scenario.
(4) If UC entitlement were to stop for any reason, then (presumably) the pension would carry on and she would be in a better position then.
If she doesn’t claim, then the DWP could still do (1) on the basis that she is entitled to the money even though she is not receiving it (notional income) and they still could try (3) - except that she will be substantially worse off because she won’t actually be receiving the pension.
I think that’s it in terms of practical advice?
Great summary Elliot, thanks.
Thank you for all your advice.