Contribution based ESA

My husband has been on IB for 10 years and has been migrated to contribution based ESA (after appealing). He has been told this will stop in October 2013 due to the 365 day time limit. Am I right to assume he is on contribution based ESA because I work full time? Once his benefit is stopped, will he be able to reclaim contribution based ESA again, for instance, perhaps there is a 3 months wait and then you can reclaim? His condition will not get better, but he is not quite ill enough to be placed in the support group. Yet, if he was to try and claim JSA, he would have to say I can only possibly work part time at the most. If he said this, would he be declared as not being eligible to claim JSA?

It seems a ridiculous rule that if you are on income based ESA it is limitless, but if you have a full time working partner you've had it. Where is the logic. I guess the only way my husband could be considered for income based ESA is if my working hours are cut to to part-time or we split up.

Hi Jayne,

All IB claimants are being migrated to contributary ESA. As you say, time in WRAG is now limited to 365 days although there is no limit to time in the Support Group.

The only people who will be able to claim again and get another yhear in WRAg are those who have made NI contributions through employment in the past 2 full tax years. I am afraid that this will rule out anyone who has been transferred from IB

The only way for your husband to be paid more contributary ESA is to be put into the Support Group at a later stage. For this reason it is important that he keeps his claim open, even if he is no longer being paid.

This subject is discussed in some depth in this thread

Can I reclaim ESA?

Edit - please do not post duplicate threads if the first one does not appear immediately. All posts on this site are pre-moderated and will not appear until then. How long this takes depends on how many, voluntary, moderators are on-line. I have deleted your duplicate post so that all replies are kept together for you