LCWRA Success and loss

I want to say a huge thank you to the people on this forum who helped me with my claim and also the people who created the guides themselves. Thanks to them and everyones help here, I was able to make a Succseful claim and was awarded LCWRA for 14 months! It was such a lifeline and huge relief to be awarded this and I don't think I would of been successful without the help from the guides and advice here, so again thank you so much .

I fear I am going to lose my award before even recieveing my first payment though which is devestating. I moved in with my girlfriend recently and have been told I have to make a joint claim. She is here on a temporary visa and doesn't have the right to public funds so is not eligible for UC so I assumed this wouldn't affect my claim.

Turns out though that our income and savings are treated as a single claim. She has all her savings and income from self employement in one current account which equals over £16k . I don't know if there is anyway I can get the DWP to recognise these as buisness income, which they mainly are, rather than savings and I think it is likely I will lose my universal credit now. It's absolutely gutting and such a terrible system, because she has money they now expect her to pay all my rent and bills for me? I can't contribute financially to our relationship much without UC and it forces me to essentially become a financial burdern instead. I can't believe how unfair the system is.

So now my only hope is to pursue a PIP claim, I was too scared to do this before but winning LCWRA has atleast given me some confidence. My question is, much of what i wrote for my LCWRA assessment applies to pip. Can I copy and paste parts of it, with small amounts of editing for my PIP answers or would the DWP be aware of this and frown upon it somehow?

Also Would it help or hinder my case to tell them that I was awarded LCWRA in my PIP application?

Thank you very much again for your help

Unfortunately not, this was the impression I was under too. They just closed my claim today. My partner went to them and explained the situation and they just said that her money is classed as my money essentially and as all her money, including income from self employement is in one current account, they have to class it all as savings.

I could try manditory reconsideration of my case but I don't see what the point is as if they class her savings as mine there's nothing I can do. Very upsetting to say the least. I've spent most of the last 2 weeks writing my PIP claim atleast and have sent that off now, so I hope I can atleast get something eventually. It would still be considerably smaller amount than I was getting on Universal credit but a vital lifeline none the less.

Thanks for your reply Gordon. I think I wasn't clear enough in my original post. What I meant was, we both have 2 seperate current accounts, they are not joined in any way. The DWP are taking the total amount of her current account, the total amount of my current account and treating it as our joint "savings". This is regardless that large amounts of the money in her account is direct income from self employment and not purely savings. They told her as they have no way to verify how much of her account is really savings or not , they have to treat it all as her savings. The only way I could see any chance of me appealing my claim is if they would be somehow willing to treat part of her income as buisness money and not savings. No one seemed open to this at the job centre and I reckon there's a very slim chance of any kinf of appeal managing to get them to change their mind. I may still try anyway. The whole system is just horribly unfair, I'm left with hardly any money to contribute to rent and food etc, all my savings will soon be eaten away now as it will all have to be spent on rent and bills. Even if my account reaches zero they wont allow me back as her savings will still rule me out of making a claim. I don't know how anyone can think its fair for your partner to pay your entire bills and rent and cost of living but apparently they do . Whole thing really is quite sickening , especially after working so hard to win my LCWRA claim. I have just completed my PIP atleast and will hope for the best with that. I may write an appeal for my UC but it feels a bit of a fools errand at this point.