Do I need to pay back ESA?

Thank you Gary. I will phone in the morning. Thank you for the link. I have found our local advice centre. I will see what help I can get from them.

Dear JA, I just want to send my sympathy. Some people including parts of officialdom seem to think if you let so much as one property you are automatically a [choose unpleasant language] rich person. Yet the vast majority of landlords are only letting one property, often the former home of now deceased parents etc. And sometimes because they are not professionals, being taken to the cleaners by unscrupulous tenants, which happened to someone I know whose late Mum's bungalow was trashed to the extent of over £10,000 to put right. And yes we let out our old house, but it is now a safe home for a widowed refugee and her children from a war zone in the middle east at a sensible rent.
So I do wish you the best in sorting this tangle, and holding your head up high in the meantime. If necessary involve your MP to try and speed things up getting at least a part payment to meet bills.
Denby

I said I would update you. I have, at last, had my payments restarted, and will receive back pay. The delay was inadvertently caused by me.

Apologies to Denby. Somehow I didn’t see your message until today. Thank you for your support.

This is what happened. I had my ESA payments stopped in August last year. No letter of explanation, just stopped. By the end of September, despite many phone calls I still had no payments or explanations so our son flew us out to stay with him in USA. He was fantastic, we had to pay for nothing at all. We stayed in his house and he paid for all our food,etc. It saved us on food and heating bills which was a massive help to us.

Before we went we sent in copies of our accounts. But heard nothing at all.

While away I kept in regular contact with DWP by telephone. They told me the case was being investigated. We stayed with our son longer than planned as nothing was changing with the ESA situation over here. When I was away I was told that my payments had been temporarily suspended, not stopped, while they looked into things.

As soon as we returned I completed the form to say I was back from abroad. I also phoned on the day I arrived to say I was back. I had a phone call to tell me they were now going to begin investigation. It isn’t the word they used. I can’t remember, exactly, what they said. I was completely unaware that they weren’t looking into it until I returned. Had I known I might not have spent the whole time worrying. I could not understand why it was taking months. The longer they took the worse I felt.

Three weeks after we were back I received a letter to ask me to complete and return the form. As it had already been sent I phoned them again. The woman checked for me and it definitely hadn’t been received. I was told it was lost in the post. The woman I spoke to told me it could be downloaded from DWP website. I spent hours searching then decided to phone them yet again.


Luckily, I got a woman who actually knows what she is doing. She checked to see if the form had been received and it was filed under white something or other, not under the form name. She said it was the first one she had looked at!

She arranged a call back for me. I had a call from the team who were looking at my case. They said that what I was doing was fine. I had informed them originally, and that it was classed as permitted work. Because I am on contributions based it does not affect my payments as money from the cottage is well below the permitted amount. She said that it is classed as permitted work, not money from property, because I sometimes answer a phone call, or I might see people outside and they ask me questions. It has always been permitted work. The cottage is next door. My husband and daughter do all the running of the place.

I want to say thank you for your help and support.

It certainly was worth persevering. It can be soul destroying. And the music they play is enough to make anyone give up.