Support group decision but no benefit

Claim started for cb esa in jan 2013, payments stopped after 365 day rule. Call from atos march 2014 to say no assessment needed and placed into support group. Letter from dwp on Friday stating rate of benefit for 2013 was less than received on assessment rate apparently due to company pension and that I would not be receiving any further payments as year had passed. Spoke to dwp today to explain and they informed me that I had been placed in sg from 14/3/14 which was when I had the call from atos and as this had gone passed the year I would only get credits. Surely they should backdate to 13 wks after claim as it is through no fault of mine that atos had such a huge backlog of assessments. With regards to my personal pension I did inform of this when I took my id to the job centre plus at the start of my claim. What do I do now ?

Hi Badders,

You are correct that, as long as this was a new claim for ESA rather than a migration from IB, the Support Group decision should have been backdated to the beginning of week 14 of your claim and the clock should have been 're-set' so that you still have 365 days left in WRAG.

If you are on contriibutory ESA then the first £85 of your pension should be disregarded and ESA reduced by 50p for every extra £1 of pension above that level. If you are on income-related ESA then it will be reduced £ for £.

The best thing would be for you to phone DWP and ask for a return call from a supervisor, these people tend to have more accurate knowledge than the telephone answering staff.

Thanks will call them again

That's nuts, how do they get away with not paying you the full amount when they're the ones who couldn't assess you in time! It's ridiculous!

Forgot to mention that when I spoke to dwp they told me to write a letter asking for reconsideration of decision being backdated so that my payments could start again. Is this the best course of action or should I phone again and ask for call back from supervisor.