ESA - other income

Edward wrote: Hello everyone. This is a fairly simple question, but I can't seem to find the answer anywhere.

I'm in the middle of making a claim for income-related ESA. For the last few months my partner has very kindly given me 50 pounds a week so I can see a private psychotherapist, due to my very limited income I was getting when I was employed as a apprentice and reliant on SSP.

I'm under 25. How will this affect my ESA claim? Do I need to declare it? Should I ask him to stop paying me this so it doesn't affect my claim?

Thanks in advance for your advice.

It will really depend on whether you are partners in the benefit sense, this does not require you to be married, or you are not.

If you are, then you are required to make a joint claim and any income that your partner has will be deducted from your ESA(IR), further, if your partner works 24 or more hours a week, then your claim will be denied.

If you are not partners, then it will depend on how a DWP Decision Maker views the payments, they may see it as a gift and there will be no impact or they may treat it as income, unfortunately there is no clear guidance n this area.

I recommend that you get face to face advice from a trained benefit advisor, they will be able to look at all of your personal circumstances and advise you as to what your options are.

Do an internet search for "welfare advice" with your postcode, town or county.

Gordon

Edward wrote: Thanks for the message.

To clarify, we are not partners in the legal sense (we don't live together).

You don't have to be living together for the DWP to consider you as partners, if you regularly stay at each others houses overnight they may still consider you to be partners.

If you stay one night a week then you probably won't be considered to be partners, if you stay six nights you probably will, if it is somewhere in between then any Decision on your being partners is again down to the Decision Maker, that is why I recommend you get face to face advice.

Gordon