Savings

Thank you Mr B.

I think I have been a bit vague, but I have been panicking and I couldn't think of a way of explaining properly.

To give a better picture of what has happened. Last October, while I was claiming Income related ESA, I received a windfall of £6000 which raised my total savings to £11,500 and I immediately informed the DWP. They reduced my ESA accordingly.
My total savings now stands at £9000 today.

At the beginning of May I started to receive my state pension, and I also received a letter from the HB office stating my HB was on hold, and they wanted me to produce evidence of my savings and income within one month before they will reinstate it. I have now emailed everything to them and I have also told them of my windfall last October.
(I said that I had to re-apply for HB, I don't know if reinstate is the same thing.)

I did apply for pension credit a couple of months ago and I have just received a letter to say that I have qualified for it, and I have emailed a copy of that to the HB office too.

I feel very bad about not realising that I had to inform the HB office separately to the DWP last October. All I can do is wait to hear from the HB office, they now have all the information they requested from me.

Many thanks

irnbru77

I feel very bad about not realising that I had to inform the HB office separately to the DWP last October.

Hi again rnbru77

I do understand how you feel about this but I'm sure you don't need me to tell you how complex the benefits system is! It's very easy to do, or not do, something in error, and many of us have done so in our time re benefits matters! In your case however it seems from what you've said that you not telling HB in October 2020 has, for reasons explained in my earlier posts, not created an overpayment in your HB when you were still on ESA IR. Thank you for further clarifying the details of this issue. From what you've said in your latest post about HB office suspending your HB I suspect that the DWP had indeed informed HB that your ESA has ceased because you have reached state retirement age, if so this is exactly what should have happened. Quite correctly HB then suspended your HB claim as it had been until then based on your receipt of ESA. I am very pleased that you qualify for pension credit and that you have informed HB of this and have sent them other information that they need. I hope you won't have to wait too long to hear back from HB, in light of all the information you've given us it seems unlikely there'll be a really bad outcome re this and may not be a bad outcome at all! Now that you are on PC the DWP may contact you from time to time to ask you what your savings etc are at the time so that they can then perform an updated means-test on it. When you receive any further letters from DWP I recommend that you send a copy of them to HB to keep them updated even if your level of PC is unchanged. Like you were I am currently on ESA income related, I also receive PIP and HB/CTR like you. Whenever any of these change, even for the annual uprating in April, I always send a copy of DWP letters to HB.

Good luck re all this and please feel free to post again if you want or need to.

Kind regards

Mr B