Friend distraught re ESA can anyone help on this

Hi everyone

My friend has a number of disabilities. He is self employed and his work is mainly physical but there is also a lot of admin/marketing/communicating with customers, etc, as well.

He has an access to work support worker, but has run into difficulty because he was claiming ESA because he couldn't do his physical work due to an injury. He has a lot of cognitive/mental health difficulties too and genuinely didn't realise he shouldn't have been claiming ESA and having a support worker at the same time. He realises it now and won't do it again.

He thought his support worker was assigned for the admin side of things and since he was still doing that he didn't realise there was a problem.

Anyway, he's been told he can keep his support worker if he stops his ESA. He was only getting about £10 a week anyway.

But his problem is that the lady on the phone told him he may be prosecuted and be asked to pay back all the ESA he received for the last month or two. He's not too worried about having to pay back but is absolutely distraught that he may be prosecuted as he genuinely didn't know.

Another issue is that someone from access to work said that in future if he's injured (it happens with physical work more often), he could try and get Permitted Work, and that way he can still do the admin side of things and keep his support worker for that. But he said the whole Permitted Work side of things is so confusing to him and then he broke down in tears. He's still upset about potential prosecution and on top of that is worried for the future as he has some very genuine injuries as a result of his work, which flare up from time to time and may mean that he's off for short periods (but in order to keep his business afloat there is still lots of non physical work to be done).

Can anyone help me to help him understand. I'm struggling to understand it all myself.

Should he look into Permitted Work for the future?
Where do you start with that?
Is he likely to get prosecuted over this genuine mistake? (it will severely affect his mental health)

thanks for reading.

I will get him to seek welfare advice, thanks.

His claim for ESA was invalid because he was still doing some work, all the admin side of his business and still having an access to work support worker (but he naively just thought he was ill and 'off work' in the sense that he wasn't going out and doing the physical stuff).

To keep a support worker going while on ESA he'd have to qualify for something called Permitted Work. I normally find stuff easy to understand but when I looked it all up on the net, it was very complicated, so wondering if anyone else knows how that side of things works.