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Forum Home  →  Discussion  →  Universal credit migration  →  Thread

irESA moving to UC

SallyA
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Welfare Benefits, Citizens Advice Swindon

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Total Posts: 18

Joined: 22 April 2019

My client has been on income related ESA for several years (support group – no SDP), but had to claim UC recently when he became liable for housing costs. DWP carried over his ESA status to LCWRA so he got the disability element, and client fully expected to move to monthly UC payments and his ESA to stop. However, they carried on paying his ESA fortnightly, and when he got his first UC payment, the statement said he was continuing to claim ESA and deducted it as income.

The maths works so he doesn’t lose out, but why is it happening? Shouldn’t the UC claim have triggered a stop to ESA? The service centre was baffled, but a contact at the local job centre said she had seen this with other claimants recently. I thought the dual claim thing only happened with new style JSA/ESA as the whole point was to close legacy claims. Has anyone come across this? thx!

Ianb
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Macmillan benefits team, Citizens Advice Bristol

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Total Posts: 958

Joined: 24 November 2017

Are you sure the ESA claim is entirely income based? If the ESA was contribution based with an income based top up then only the income based part will close, the contribution based part will continue. If the ESA has changed to £111.65/week that would indicate that it is an ongoing contribution based award.

SallyA
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Welfare Benefits, Citizens Advice Swindon

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Total Posts: 18

Joined: 22 April 2019

That did seem a likely explanation but you never know with UC! anyway funnily enough, the client just called to say he was completely mistaken and he is still on cbESA ....  heigh ho. Thanks for your quick reply anyway!