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IRESA includes carer premium but not carers allowance
Hi All
I have a client whose IRESA award shows a carer premium but no deduction for carers allowance. Cl says she’s not getting carers allowance but is a carer for one of her adult children.
I’d understand if CBESA was in payment and there was an underlying entitlement issue but this is not the case.
Is there another reason this might be happening that I’m not aware of?
Are you sure the ESA is entirely income based? Could be a mix of contribution based and income based ESA in which case the CA would not be paid.
Are you sure the ESA is entirely income based? Could be a mix of contribution based and income based ESA in which case the CA would not be paid.
Defo all income based
Just to reiterate the previous point, are you 100% completely certain that it’s all IRESA?
Because I have come across several cases where the ESA calc sent to the claimant shows that they get only IRESA, but when we have called ESA to query this, we have established that they in fact would get CBESA if the IRESA were to stop for some reason, so they are technically in receipt of both elements of ESA (the IR and CB elements). The DWP seem to have this binary system where one or the other shows as being payable, but not both at the same time (even though this is what should happen in many cases).
So don’t rely on the award notice saying ‘your amount of income-related payable ESA is xxx’ as it’s often misleading.
Obviously you might get some clues if you can establish the circs prior to the client getting ESA - if they went on it young, it could be ESA in youth (which of course has now been abolished).
Sorry if you have checked this, but I thought it was worth mentioning, as the DWP’s approach can be very misleading indeed.
Cheers
Alex
Could the old Severe Disablement Allowance have been in payment prior to ESA? If it had overlapped with CA at the time, perhaps an implementation of the payment of CA had been overlooked?
I know, I know ..... old school stuff, and not sure if I’v remembered correctly
Elaine