Back dated Income related ESA Claim

Hi,
I received in the post today a letter saying I was not entitled to any back dated Income Related ESA due to “ Your partner claiming pension credit before your claim was migrated to Employment Support Allowance”. I have been on contribution ESA since 1996 but the claim is to see if I’m entitled to any back date income related ESA.

My back dated claim for income related ESA was from 18/6/2013 until now.

My husband claimed Carer’s allowance and Pension Credit until he was 65 and now doesn’t claim these although he has an underlying entitlement. He stopped claiming Pension Credit in April 2014 when he was 65.

I have a couple of questions please.

1) Do you know why claiming pension credit would mean not being entitled to any back dated IR ESA? Is it because they consider we had enough joint money coming into the household?

2) Most important question. If my husband receiving pension credit is the reason I’m not entitled to any back pay from June 2013 until April 2014, why would we not be entitled to any back pay FROM April 2014 onwards until now as his pension credit finished in 2014.

Surely just because you aren’t entitled to any back pay for a certain amount of the period, why would it make all the years null and void and negate any entitlement, because if this IR ESA had been done properly in the first place wouldn’t when we came off pension credit in 2014, we would then have claimed IR ESA then?

Obviously I have no problem if we are not entitled to anything but the reason seems not only to be for just a short space of the time I’m claiming for, but also not much of an explanation.

Just an extra moan really. When I originally filled the forms out supplying a fair bit of proof, I also included about my husband being on pension credit etc. They then asked me for all mine and my husband’s bank statements for all these years. It took a very long time for me to do with being so sick and probably cost about £30 in ink and paper to print and about £20 to post. Not to mention the whole episode from start to finish had an affect on my mental and physical health with the stress of it all only to be told this. They could have told me that we weren’t entitled because of the pension credit in the first place but they wrote back to me asking for more bank statements. Seems pointless if they already knew about the pension credit on the original form I filled in. As I say just a moan really about the whole procedure. Also to be honest it’s not very nice to know your whole personal and financial statements are in someone else’s hands when all they had to say is that you are not entitled because of the pension credit in the first place.

I’m just wondering whether I’m just being fobbed off and whether I should pursue it more or just leave it.

Any thoughts I would be grateful.

Also if this is true about the pension credit maybe this will help other people when deciding whether to make a claim or not.

Thanks,

Jenny