ESA support Group and Universal Credit

Hello Kevin and welcome to the forum.

Your full name seems to be showing, if you wish to change it, this tells you how.

My guess is that your ESA is what is known as New Style ESA or Contribution Based ESA – i.e. you qualify for it on the basis of your national insurance record. If this is the case then it will not be affected by your UC claim and will continue as is. Depending on your household situation you may be entitled to some additional money under UC, which will be an additional payment.

If your ESA is actually income based then claiming UC will almost certainly have triggered a transfer from ESA to UC. The general process is the same under UC in that you are required to fill in a UC50 form, which is identical to the ESA 50 form and have an identical assessment. You will be given a work coach who will potentially be your new best friend in this process. You will need to explain to them that you have only recently been accessed under the ESA scheme and were placed in the support group and request that you are moved into the UC equivalent of the support group which is known as the lcwra group (Limited Capability for Work-Related Activity).

It has not been possible to start a claim for income based ESA for somewhile. Since I am assuming that your current ESA claim is fairly new, it will be New Style or Contribution based.

If you find things not running smoothly do try and get some personal advice from a local benefits adviser. This can be a helpful link in locating someone.

Catherine

Hello Mr Fibrospondodythmatic,

As with everything else, Covid has got in the way of the mass migration over to UC. They had started a pilot project back in July 2019 which was supposed to run for a year, however because of Covid that project was suspended, and I haven’t heard of any plans to restart it. After 10,000 people have been moved over on that test pilot there will be a period of assessment. I assume that it will after that that we will hear the details of what is going to happen and when.

My understanding is that everyone currently not on UC is likely to have to make a UC claim but I am convinced there will be mountains of information about that when the migration is launched. There are likely to be key dates to look out for, which will be different for different people; so people who struggle to deal with their post might potentially have problems.

My personal expectation is that people who are currently in the ESA Support Group will be moved over to the LCWRA group without reassessment. I just don’t think the DWP have the capacity to reassess people. But that is just my personal view.

The government has made a commitment that nobody who has to migrate to UC will lose money. That is their total benefit payments will be the same the day before migration and the day after. If someone would have received more under legacy benefits than under UC they will be paid a transitional element to make up the difference. I have yet to fully wrap my head around how the transitional element will be managed after migration day.

I suspect that triggers more questions than answers,
Catherine