Can anyone advise if a personal injury payout is is counted as income/savings & so affecting benefits, such as housing /council tax. Help appreciated. Thanks. K
You need to get professional advice from a solicitor with experience in this area, you may already have one involved in your claim.
There are two potential issues, the payment will be treated as capital for the purposes of means tested benefits such as ESA(IR), Universal Credit and Housing Benefit, there are others.
The payment should be disregarded for 52 weeks but you need to be careful about how you dispose of the money during this time as the DWP and your Local Authority can consider you to still be in possession of the money and reduce your benefits as a result.
One way around this is to have the money paid into a trust but these are not simple to set up and you will definitely need legal advice as not all trusts are suitable.
The second issue is whether the "injury" has led to you needing to claim the Income Related benefit in part or in whole, certainly, the DWP will be looking to see if they can recover any of the benefits paid from your payment, again you need proper advice.
Gordon
Nothing on this board constitutes legal advice - always consult a professional about specific problems
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