New Style ESA and Income Support

Hi all

A couple in receipt of income support and both are claiming carers allowance. However the main IS claimant may have to stop the claim as it is affecting an SDP. However he can also claim ESA under special rules and will be entitled to New Style ESA based on circumstances. This would mean that he would have an underlying entitlement to carers and be able to stay on IS and as he is not in receipt of carers allowance then the other person would be entitled to their SDP.

So my question is will the claim for new style ESA force a move to UC?

Thank you.

I was about to say:

Section 124(1)(h) of the SSC&B(NI) Act 1992 says that the IS claimant personally must not be entitled to ESA - it does not distinguish between contribution-based and income-related, so the way I read that any ESA entitlement, old or new style, would be fatal to IS.

However, he can remain eligible for IS as a carer without being entitled to Carers Allowance: I think that would hit the sweet spot where he stays on IS and doesn’t spoil anyone else’s SDP.  But I wonder whether the foregone CA would be counted as notional income in that case

But I had only read the GB SSC&B Act and just assumed the NI one would be identical.  The version of the NI Act on legislation.gov.uk does not have s124(1)(h) and is silent about the effect of ESA on IS.  That could be an updating error of course, but needs further investigation.

Thank you for the reply. The claimant is entitled to ESA as he meets the conditionality but it just whether it would end the Income support claim. As both are carers can the income support claim be switched from Mr to Mrs? Then at least we would protect the income support claim no matter what happened?

Unfortunately income support in NI are not up to date with the fact that he does not have to be claiming carers allowance to continue to care for someone and be entitled to IS. This would likely have to go to appeal.

Assuming there is an editing error in the SSC&B(NI) Act on legislation.gov.uk (which I will have to look into later), and assuming it is supposed to be identical to the GB Act, if he becomes entitled to any flavour of ESA that will kill his IS.

It would not be possible for the partner to make her own IS claim.  IS has an individual claimant who owns the award - the partner is not a joint claimant, she is an arithmetical function in his award.  The switcheroo cannot be done.

Thank you. We have been able to switch claimants in the past with ESA but both had been found to be in the support group in those circumstances. IS unfortunately here will not give us a definite answer and keep saying “I don’t see why not”