Esa overpayment

Nicola wrote: Hello, is there anyone that can give me advice on how to appeal against a Dwp overpayment, it's regarding my partners ESA claim. They have stopped his ESA and back dated the award for 5 years as they say being self employed (even though not taking a wage) I worked 24 hours a day 7 days a week and therefore exceeded the amount of hours allowed!!! I've done the manual reconsideration but they haven't changed their decision. Please could someone guide me in the right direction as this is a farce but Dwp have a knack of twisting everything that's said. Thanks

I'm afraid that this is not something that can really be dealt with on a forum, any forum! You need to get face to face advice from a trained advisor as you need someone who can look through all of the papers and the accounts from your self-employment to see if there is any opportunity to dispute what the DWP are saying.

Do an internet search for "welfare advice" with your postcode, town or county.

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What advice I can provide is as follows.

Any appeal would be classed as being an administrative appeal, this is different from the normal entitlement appeal, it will be heard in front of a Judge only and will be concerned with the facts of the case and what the applicable law says.

From your post your husband must be receiving Income Related ESA, either in part or in whole. This is important, if he is receiving Contribution Based ESA then it should not be affected by any work that you have done.

Entitlement to ESA(IR) is dependant on three areas;

- your household income
- your assets, savings and cash
- the hours that you work as his partner

From your post it appears to be the latter area that is in question.

ESA(IR) has an absolute rule that a claimant cannot receive ESA(IR) if their partner is working 24 or more hours a week. This is irrelevant of any income earned or not.

The first thing you need to look at is whether you have at any time during his claim informed the DWP that you were self-employed, if you have and can show that the notification was received by the DWP, then any over payment would, at least in part, be their fault and they may not be able to recover the money.

If you have not informed the DWP, even if you did not think you had to then I would expect you to still be liable.

Secondly, can you show that you have not worked 24 or more hours a week? For any week that you can provide evidence of this, then your husbands ESA should not have been affected.

Finally, you say that you have made money from your work. You will need to show that this is the case, any income that you made would potentially have been deducted from his ESA(IR). So even if you can show that you have not worked for 24 hours, you also need to show that their should be no other deductions.

That's all we can advise on.

Gordon