Bamboozled is not the word!!!

The reason why UC have calculated your income from conts based ESA as being £609.05 is because UC is calculated monthly, and any income is also converted to a monthly amount.

Your weekly amount of conts based ESA (Support Group) is £140.55. To work this out as a monthly amount, UC multiply this amount x52 then divide by 12 = £609.05.

It's possible that the ESA Migration Team have yet to work out your Transitional Protection, which could explain why your UC amount is so low. There are backlogs at present with the team calculating TP due to the ramping up of the amount of people being sent a migration notice.

Hi Sue,

Sorry you have been so stressed. Not sure if I'm allowed to post numbers here as nobody else has answered directly, but I know I would appreciate seeing calculations in your position.


Your previous ESA (Contribution Based with Income Related Top Up) = £161.75 (£140.55 standard rate + £21.20 enhanced disability premium) which you receive as £323.50 every 2 weeks.

Although it seems like you receive £323.50 x2 each month, that is only 28 days worth, whereas UC is calculated monthly (30/31 days).

This is also where that confusion regarding you requesting fortnightly payments (every 14 days/2 weeks) and them saying they can only do bimonthly (every 15ish days) came in.

So your actual monthly ESA amount was £161.75 x 52÷12 = £700.92

Under UC, you are entitled to £823.41 (£400.14 standard rate + £423.27 LCWRA).

This means you are better off on UC by £122.49, meaning that you do not receive Transitional Protection, because you aren't losing money moving to UC. (The ESA claimants who receive Transitional Protection are those who received an additional Severe Disability Premium due to receiving PIP, which you do not receive.)

Your Contribution Based ESA will continue to be paid by ESA, and the Income related part will be paid by UC. So it's "deducted" by UC but still paid by ESA so you don't lose anything/it balances out.

So, as you have requested bimonthly payments, your claims should look like this:

+£281.10 - CB ESA every 2 weeks (£609.05 monthly)

+£214.36 - UC gross monthly (£823.41 UC - £609.05 ESA) - which you will receive as £107.18 every 15 days, as you requested bimonthly payments

- £31.55 advance payment repayment (which will be deducted from your UC payment bimonthly as £214.36 UC - £31.55 = £182.81 NET monthly UC {£91.41 bimonthly}

Giving you a total of £791.86 monthly (£182.81 UC + £609.05 ESA), which is £90.94 more than you usually receive.

After your advance payment has been paid in full (I can work out when this will be if you post the amount you received as advance payment), your monthly income will be

£823.41 (£214.36 UC + £609.05 ESA), which is £122.49 more than you used to receive on ESA alone.

Hope this helps! I've run into a few snaggles myself as I'm in the same process, often nobody online can help nor can the DWP, so I put my former accountancy skills to use and try to work out the calculations myself!