How the DWP treats pensions on UC

Hi, I'm hoping it is okay to post this here. I am in receipt of PIP and now do have the limited capacity for work in the UC .

Hi, I've been having a real battle with UC - gradually the outstanding issues are being reduced. After 6 years they acknowledged there was in fact an underpayment not an overpayment on my account, so quite a bit of money is being repaid to me (it took getting an advocate, and my MP involved.) There are two outstanding issues involved - one is to do with backdating the limited capacity for work which I have a Tribunal about next week.

The other is how they treat my local Government Pension.
I think I know what the answer will be, but please can I check anyway. I'm in receipt of 3 local government pensions , which I went through the Occupational retirement on ill health grounds to claim. Despite previous advice from both the job centre and the Universal credit team, my pension is not being treated in the way they suggested. (so I was told it would be treated as income and therefore above a certain threshold, a certain % would be deducted from my universal credit payment each month. ) What is happening, is that the entire amount is taken off my UC amount every single month irrespective of whether I have reached that threshold. So even when I make a loss, ALL the pension is taken off. (This is happening more because my health has deteriorated further so I'm not actually able to work currently.) And making me worse off than if I hadn't claimed it in the first place. Is there anything you can suggest that would help me with this ?

Thank you Gary. Do you think a Welfare rights group could help me challenge this then, I'm not sure of whether it is challengeable or whether the DWP can just say 'this is what we do with it'? Thanks again, and I'll check out the links.

It’s very annoying. I get 2 ill-health pensions and they are both ‘taken off’ my ESA, so I am no better off financially after receiving them. What makes it all the more annoying, is that one of them is from ‘permitted work’! I won’t actually be any better off until State Retirement Age, and then they will probably cancel out my Housing Benefit! We can’t win.

Even more annoying, is that they are termed ‘unearned income’, when we are receiving it because we went to work…… part of our salaries went to our pensions, so how on earth CAN it be defined as ‘unearned’. Hopefully some kind soul will take them to court over this, but probably not. * total disability discrimination against people who can no longer work because of ill health*

In other news, all our SERPS have been wiped out with the ‘new’ state pension. Though I am going to write to the DWP to confirm that one…. Mutter..mutter….mutter….