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Questions re how UC& Contributory Benefits work in practice
All these people will still have to claim help with council tax from their local council…perhaps they should also register an hb claim just in case their uc award does not include housing costs? It’s exempt accommodation or dwp don’t know how to work out the housing costs so just don’t pay them and suggest the claimant approaches the council for hb? Maybe not a legal approach by some local dwp offices but pragmatic….
Update from operational stakeholders…
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Jon - on the lobster pot and getting out - we ran out of time for questions and I suspect the people who came wouldn’t have had an answer anyway - I will send in an email query.
Daphne - thanks - it will be interesting to see what they come up with.
Daphne, could I clarify please. If someone claimed UC but was actually entitled to cb JSA would the date of claim for UC be accepted as the date of claim for JSA in those circumstances?
It seems bonkers to advise clients to claim both JSA and UC and anyway can that be done in practice. You can’t currently make a claim for JSA and ESA… Won’t client end up going to JC twice for initial appointment if they make claim for both or is the system intelligent enough to pick up the double claim? My head hurts…
Maggie - you can get contJSA and UC - UC would act as a top-up to meet the housing costs. A bit like in the current system if you claimed contJSA and then ibJSA to cover your mortgage costs.
JSA and ESA are different benefits with different entitlement conditions so you can’t get both - you’re either fit for work or not. UC is just a means-tested top-up which covers people in all situations if their income doesn’t cover all the needs of them and their family.
I need to chase UC up on further clarity - and will do so - but the last I had from them was that you should claim UC first and then cbJSA (I have a suspicion that the system will reject a JSA claim first if the claimant meets the gateway conditions for UC). If the person is late claiming cbJSA then it shouldn’t make too much difference because whatever they actually receive reduces their UC entitlement pound for pound - so if they get less JSA because of a delay in claim they will get more UC.
I think that’s correct!
what if claiming c-jsa later means you no longer meet the contribution conditions because it is a new year?
Daphne,
I do understand that UC will be a top up to contributory JSA or ESA. I suppose my question (not very well asked) was once UC is in place will a claimant have to decide there is potential entitlement to a cb benefit and make a separate claim just in case. (presumably two online claims asking pretty much the same questions)
Perhaps I had a vague hope that someone could claim UC and DWP would establish contributions record and award (old style JSA or ESA) with UC top up if appropriate…..so much for simplification of the benefits system.
I believe it is two separate claims - like you say not really a simplification - similar to the days when people claimed incapacity benefit with a top-up of income support!
I’ve just been to a DWP stakeholders meeting at our local Jobcentre. The DWP said that if someone goes to the government website and puts their postcode in they will be directed to claim UC.
I asked what about the people who want to claim contribution based JSA? Apparently that’s no longer possible, no-one would want to do that anyway as UC is a better benefit. Its also not possible to claim cont. JSA and UC for housing costs.
I suggested that they were wrong about this, and they promised to look into this and get back to me.
I suppose ignoring all the complicated bits is one way of making it look like a simple system.
It is scary that they can apparently know so little about the benefit they are phasing in. Obviously you can get UC and JSA(c) or ESA(c) at the same time: they are the first two prescribed items of income other than earnings in Reg 66(1)(b) (and likely to be by far the most common ones I should have thought). Someone with no significant capital and no other income apart from JSA(c)/ESA(c) will qualify for UC if:
- they are in a couple, and/or
- they have a child, and/or
- they have any housing costs, and/or
- they have the Support Component
Following on from my previous comment, our local Jobcentre person has come back to me with the following…
“..yes if a person has an underlying entitlement to JSA C then this can be claimed as well as any addition for housing costs, toped up as UC.. ... Initially, the post code does drive which benefit, and it would be UC in the first instance, and as the claim progresses, JSA under the umbrella of UC can be claimed., but this is confirmed by a telephone call during the claim to “an account developer” in the service centre and the claim progresses, as JSA C under UC umbrella “
Credit to her for looking into it and coming back with some practical information. If I understand her correctly when people go to the gov.uk website and enter their postcode they will be steered onto UC, but at some point they will also be allowed / encouraged to claim cont. JSA.
When I tested this myself the website asked some screening questions, then informed me that I “may be eligible to claim Universal Credit rather than Jobseekers Allowance” and offered me a link to the UC section of the site. There was no option to continue with a JSA claim.
It will be interesting to see how well this system works in practice. A cont. JSA claim may be valuable for the fortnightly payments alone, so many people may want to claim it if they know its an option. And does a cont. JSA claim still carry class one National Insurance credits? If so that is another reason to insist on claiming.
Going back to my original question, and thanks everyone for your contributions, am I right to assume from Cordelia’s post above that someone who may be entitled to Contribution based benefit and who would under the old system also claim HB, will under UC only apply for UC - the housing costs being paid under UC and an app to CJSA or CESA made some time later when directed by an Account Developer? So it looks like there’s one simple benefit, UC, but contribution based benefits are hiding from public view under the umbrella.
Exactly. And we still need the new-style contribution based ESA and JSA for people who don’t qualify for UC at all, perhaps because their capital is too high or their partner has significant earnings
Maybe the DWP doesn’t expect contributory JSA and ESA to be around for much longer - if the leaks are to be believed.
A colleague of mine ran into this for her daughter not so long ago, they live in Manchester and the JCP staff simply didn’t know what to do, they were intent on making the daughter claim UC even though she met the contribution conditions for CJSA and had been out of the UK/EU for the past 12 months (she’d been travelling round Australia)
Unfortunately from a benefit point of view the issue was never resolved because the daughter found work within a week of being back home, but its yet another layer of complexity to think about.