Incapacity Benefit and transfers to Contribution Based ESA

Hi, hopefully someone can help me with this, I am struggling to find the information.

Client was long term sick (in receipt of DLA/PIP over the years) only ever had one job and that was for under a week. He made a claim for Incapacity Benefit around 2007 and was transferred to ESA in 2013.  The client suffers from a number of disabilities and health conditions.  He was told not to worry about the level of his savings and so has often had over £6,000 in his account over the years (not disclosed)  He recently received an ESA information leaflet which caused him to question this.  When we investigated, his award stated Income Related ESA with a Disability Income Guarantee.  When we called the DWP they confirmed this and stated that he did not have enough NI contributions to have ever been transferred onto contribution based ESA.  He has always been in the Support group.

Is this right?  Would anyone on IB because of long term disability who had never worked, be automatically transferred to IR ESA and not CB ESA with potentially an IR top up?  As IB was a contribution based benefit, should he have been put into the contribution based group automatically?

Thanks in advance for any insights

If he only worked one week in theory he could not have been paid IB as would not have paid enough NI unless it was an incapacity in youth claim.

I remember a lot of people getting very confused back then, often clients would say they were claiming Incapacity benefit but in fact it was a credits only IB claim and they were being paid income support.

This led to a lot of people being wrongly advised on savings.

How old was he? Could he have had Incapacity Benefit in Youth? If I remember this correctly, those claimants were transferred to contribution based ESA.

He was 21 in 2007, I believe he has a life long learning disability, but he seems to think he was on JSA prior to the IB claim.  If he did get the IB in youth, would this still have been a contribution based claim when moving over to ESA?  This is what I can’t remember and cannot find any references for

I have made a SAR for his IB and ESA records which I am hoping to get in the next month so maybe I will find out more then

yes, if it was ib in youth then they would have went to contribution based esa when migrated.

when swapping many ib only claimants over to esa the DWP made an error on this (but in reverse) in loads of cases where they put them on conts based only but didnt check for the income related top up that most would have been due as well.

you cant take much from esa award letters these days. recently I have seen more than a few that just dont make any sense.