... good afternoon all

just a quicky !
have a cl. aged 62 who receives c.b.e.s.a and a topup of i.b.e.s.a so they receive p.c (gc) amount.
he has not claimed an occupational pension he is entitled to and my concern is that if jcp find out about this they will :
treat him as having the notional income.
state he has been overpaid benefit.

any thoughts folks ?

as ever, all gratly appreciated ...

pete

1. A claimant over pension age is not entitled to ESA
2. ESA(IR) cannot be paid if the claimant or partner receives PC.
3. Notional income rules apply to both ESA(IR) and PC(GC)

Recoverability of overpayments is subject to the usual rules. If there was no failure to disclose or misrep then any overpayment won't be recoverable.

thanx for your reply tony

my cl. is male so under pension age and he receives i.b.e.s.a on top of c.b.e.s.a to receive £130.00 pw, and my feeling is that he has to claim occ. pension rather than a means tested benefit or else jcp could treat cl. as having notional income from this if he doesn't ?

my brains not working !!!
cpag page 917 refers to p.c but not i.b.e.s.a for a person over 60 ...

thanx again ...

pete

That's interesting. There appears to be a gap in the handbook for men aged 60-64 and receiving ESA(IR) or IB-JSA... However, I can't think of any circumstances where it would be better to be on ESA/JSA rather than PC...

Maybe this is one such circumstance because I think Pension Credit would have picked this up whereas the DBC concerned obviously haven't.

As to the overpayment risk, both ESA and PC notional income provisions say that additional pension should only be taken into account from the date it would be paid if it were claimed. I think that makes a retrospective disallowance difficult - effectively they have to tell you that they are going to take it into account before they do so.

However I can see them making a case for a recoverable overpayment if there were a question on the ESA form (haven't checked) specifically asking about deferred pensions which was answered wrongly - because this arguably prevented from initiating this process.

Richard Atkinson