New Style ESA - not eligible despite unbroken NI?

I applied for New Style ESA two weeks ago. I have an unbroken NI record (I checked it online). The only gap is for this tax year (2021-22), where it says 'your record is not available yet', I assume because I am self-employed so obviously haven't done my tax return yet.

However, I rang ESA today as I had not received any response to my claim. They told me I was not eligible for ESA because I hadn't made enough NI contributions. For some reason they failed to send me a letter about this.

I am awaiting a callback from them to explain their decision but I honestly can't work out how they could have have reached it. Has anyone else come across this?

Hi Aly,

I may be wrong but maybe it depends on what class of NI you pay, I think New style ESA is when you have paid class 1 or class 2, you would need to check this I believe if self employed you can pay lower rate of class 4?, I just thought I remembered reading it somewhere? and obviously have paid it for the 2 full tax years.

Good luck

Ah OK. That's a worry. The weird thing is that I actually applied for NS ESA about 18 months ago and was given it. I ended up cancelling the claim because I was very unwell and couldn't deal with the process, though. Thank you for the info, I will check my tax return.