DLA TO ESA

Hello Bro58 I am knew to this so I am not sure if you have received my reply. Just to reiterate, my son only receives DLA - he used to have income support up to 2 years ago but he wrote and stopped this as I bought him his flat and obviously that is too much collateral. He does not receive incapacity or income support, only DLA lowest rate.
Hope this answers your question and I apologise in advance if you have received my previous reply but I am an old biddy and have not quite got to grips with this.

hadleigh9 wrote: Hello Bro58 I am knew to this so I am not sure if you have received my reply. Just to reiterate, my son only receives DLA - he used to have income support up to 2 years ago but he wrote and stopped this as I bought him his flat and obviously that is too much collateral. He does not receive incapacity or income support, only DLA lowest rate.
Hope this answers your question and I apologise in advance if you have received my previous reply but I am an old biddy and have not quite got to grips with this.

Hi h9,

I am rather confused, if a claimant's home is there only and main place of residence, it is not normally classed as an asset with respect the the "Means Test" with IS or IR ESA.

The situation does seem rather complicated and you may well need professional face to face advice, as it would not be possible for you to go into all the personal financial details on the forum.

See : Where to get advice?

Are you and your son aware of the possible implications of not having a complete NI Credits history ?

With respect to DLA, even though the award is indefinite, are you aware that all current DLA recipients with an indefinite award are being invited to claim PIP after October 2015.

Depending on why he is getting his DLA, PIP will be very different.

PIP LINKS :

PIP Claims Guide. (Top Link on page)

PIP information including PIP Self-Test

PIP Topic Thread in Spotlight Area


He cannot be forced into being assessed for ESA, but I would advise that you gain clarification on the NI Credit issue, and gain some professional advice before making an informed decision.

bro58

Once again thank you for your advice. Firstly my son has been so ill he has come to live with me now and we rent out his flat. So this is the reason why we came off income support. As regards N.I. credits I have written to the N.I. people and they have sent me a graph and he was credited up to 2010. I have been trying to phone them today but as you can imagine it is nigh on impossible to get hold of them but I think they open at 8.30 in the mornings so I will keep trying.

Just to say also that because he was not any incapacity or income support, when he did come off income support we were asked to pay for his medications. He takes 9 different types of medications a day (some twice, some three times) and our chemist said the price of his medications would be nearly as much as his DLA, so I spoke to my son's doctor and he signed a form for him to be exempt from paying. This will confirm to you that he is not in receipt of any other benefit than DLA.

Thank you so much for taking the bother to reply to my jumbled messages but I have tried to explain to the lady who phoned us that we do not care about claiming anything else. If she puts him over to ESA he can still claim DLA so basically we are saving them money.

I will in future let you know the outcome, but I may have to contact you again for advice if you do not mind.
Regards

hadleigh9 wrote: Once again thank you for your advice. Firstly my son has been so ill he has come to live with me now and we rent out his flat. So this is the reason why we came off income support. As regards N.I. credits I have written to the N.I. people and they have sent me a graph and he was credited up to 2010. I have been trying to phone them today but as you can imagine it is nigh on impossible to get hold of them but I think they open at 8.30 in the mornings so I will keep trying.

Just to say also that because he was not any incapacity or income support, when he did come off income support we were asked to pay for his medications. He takes 9 different types of medications a day (some twice, some three times) and our chemist said the price of his medications would be nearly as much as his DLA, so I spoke to my son's doctor and he signed a form for him to be exempt from paying. This will confirm to you that he is not in receipt of any other benefit than DLA.

Thank you so much for taking the bother to reply to my jumbled messages but I have tried to explain to the lady who phoned us that we do not care about claiming anything else. If she puts him over to ESA he can still claim DLA so basically we are saving them money.

I will in future let you know the outcome, but I may have to contact you again for advice if you do not mind.
Regards

Hi h9,

You are most welcome.

I see, that is a totally different scenario if your son's flat is being rented out.

I do hope that you gain some resolution to this issue, please let us know.

We will do our best to help, where possible.

bro58

Just to thank you all for your interest. I was correct and the ESA lady on the phone was wrong. My son cannot go from DLA to ESA as DLA is treated entirely differently and have now been told that he will not be put on PIP until 2014/2015 as his DLA is for an indefinite period.

Also she was wrong about his NHS contributions. The government only give you NHS credits for Higher & Middle rate DLA if you are on the lower rate DLA and no other benefits you are not credited but you can buy voluntary contr. of about £14 per week. Just to put the record straight when she realised he was only on DLA she then tried to say that they wanted to put him over to ESA because the government was paying his stamp. I hope she has learned something from this.