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UC and Carer Element Run On After Death
I would be grateful for any clarification or advice and apologies for the rather long post….
I have a client whose husband passed away and she was previously on his Pension Credit claim. She was getting CA for him and this ran on for the normal 8 weeks period following his death. However as she is under pension age and we are now UC, my client had to claim Universal Credit. They processed her UC claim and reduced it by her CA income however they never awarded the carers element.
Normally with other benefits the award of CA (and the accepted 8 week run on) would be enough to allow the carers premium to be included in the calculation. The UC legislation itself states in Reg 30. …….for the Purpose of Part 1 of the Act and these Regulations, a person has regular and substantial caring responsibilities for a severely disabled person if they satisfy the conditions for entitlement to carers allowance.
This has been queried with UC and the most recent response from a UC case Manager was ‘I have raised this with our quality team and they have advised according to decision makers guidance you will not be entitled to carers element for the period in question’.
Assuming this is DM guidance F6027 which advises
Run on after death of disabled person
F6027 Where
1. a claimant, who is providing regular and substantial care, is awarded a carer element and
2. the severely disabled person, in respect of whom that care is provided, dies
the carer element award will continue in payment until the end of the second assessment period following the assessment period in which the death occured1.
1 UC Regs, reg 37
However it seems that because my client is no longer providing regular and substantial care and did not have a UC claim already in place prior to her husband’s death, she may not be allowed to have this element included in her UC even though she is being paid CA.
Has anyone else had this issue or has any other thoughts? She is happy for me to query this further with UC and ask for a written response to try and determine exactly their decision thoughts but thought I’d add it here first in case anyone has been in the same situation.
Thank you for any help :-)