Affect of Social Services Back Pay on Universal Credit

I am to receive backpay from Social Services owed because I have waited a year for them to get their their act together and finalise my care assessment for a Direct Payment. Having savings of this amount affect would usually affect my Universal Credit claim. However I know backpay should usually be disregarded for 12 months but google AI told me social services backpay is disregarded indefinitely. Can anyone confirm the situation, please?

Hi David, thank you for getting back to me and apologies for the late reply. Basically I contactedSocial Services for a Care assessment in June 2025, they sent out a social worker in October but she went on long-term sick and it took them until February 2026 to send a new social worker. It has taken her until yesterday for my request for a Direct payment claim to cover Care needs to be finalised. In the meantime I have had to spend every little bit of my savings to pay my carers myself. According to the 2014 Care act, they should’ve have taken 4-6 to finalise my Care plan but it’s been a year. They say they owe back pay from January but actually my savings fell below the threshold in December, although I’m not going to fight for this extra month. They should really be paying back pay at the weekly amount that I’ve been assessed as needing, but they have said they are only going to pay the amount that I paid out in Care.
Had I been given the weekly funding from January, I would have been able to pay my carers a better wage and employ the two members of staff my care plan has assessed me as needing. I believe the 2014 care act which states they should’ve assessed me and made payment within 4 to 6 weeks would actually state they need to pay me the amount of the assessed needs, and not the amount I’ve actually been able to afford myself in Care. I have been advised to fight this and make a complaint, especially considering the fact that it’s taken them a year to finalise this assessment. You could argue it’s only taken six months because my funding was too high in the beginning, but I was advised to contact them six months before to give them time., I did that, but they have still let me down.
I really don’t like making Complaints, it didn’t help that the new social worker they sent had never done a Direct Payment assessment, i can see she tried her best that has made so many mistakes along the way, and it wasn’t until a few weeks ago when another social worker involved that we started to get somewhere, and this other social worker has been brilliant. I don’t want to get either of them in trouble, my argument is with the council not sending someone out from the October visit until February. I don’t know whether I should make a complaint, especially if it is only going to affect my Universal Credit.

I possibly should’ve mentioned that I can’t afford to lose my Universal Credit claim because if I do, I will lose the LWRCA (hope I got that right) payment which I managed to keep when my savings became low enough I could make a means tested claim and I moved over from ESA contribution. If I were to lose Universal Credit would lose the LWRCA payment when I claimed again! I’m already annoyed that I missed out on the legacy benefits. Apparently had my savings dropped low enough for men tested benefits in November 2025 I probably would’ve been able to claim and keep the severe disability payment which I only lost because I came into a small inheritance that took me above the level firm means tested benefits for a while. I just don’t want to do anything that could make the situation even worse.

Thank you David that helps a lot