Universal Credit migration from ESA parent notes

Why might it be of interest?

Employment and Support Allowance is a legacy benefit – that means that you can’t apply for it but you may still be receiving it.  Legacy benefits are coming to an end and everyone in receipt of a legacy benefit will need to apply for UC to continue to receive the equivalent benefit.

If your young person has been receiving Employment and Support Allowance (ESA) they will have received – or will shortly receive – a letter from Universal Credit telling them that they need to now claim UC and it will give a date by which the application must be made.

The following are notes from my own recent experience of going through the process to move my daughter from ESA to UC.  They are not exhaustive – just notes that I think might be helpful.

The process is not complete so I will update this document as we get further along in the claim.

What I will add here is that you MUST check the online journal regularly – not all notes added to the journal by JobCentre staff will be notified to you by text or email (a setting on your account).  I’d recommend daily or every couple of days while the claim is in progress and then probably weekly once it’s settled.

 

1        Read the screens carefully!  I know it sounds obvious but I think our tendency (certainly mine!) is to scan the content rather than read carefully – and it does help.

2        If you follow the link in the letter the actual link to create the account is quite some way down as is the link to start the actual application.

3        You start by creating an account.  This should be details of your young person – their address, date of birth, etc – although you may want to use your email address and phone number for contact details.  There’s no place to put in your details as a separate contact.  You will be creating a username and password and selecting 2 security questions.

If you put in your details by mistake you will not be able to change them and you won’t be able to use the same email address if you create another account.

4        The helpline is easy to get hold of and other parents who have called it have found it generally helpful – although they haven’t been able to answer all questions

5        You can start the application and dip in and out at any point to add or change information right up to the point where you press the SUBMIT button.

6        You will have an opportunity to review all your answers before you submit the application.

7        You must complete and submit the application within 28 days of creating the account – or you will have to start again.

8        You should aim to submit the application by the date in the letter but although it’s not referred to at all there is a 2^nd final submission date!  (But ESA may stop if you miss the date in the letter).  I’m don’t know how you keep ESA going while you complete the claim before the 2^nd final date – you may need to call the helpline or put a note in the journal.

9        The advice I got from a short workshop I did about the migration is that it’s best to submit the application right after an ESA payment has been made.  This is because there will be a gap between the final ESA payment and the first UC payment and submitting right after an ESA payment closes the gap.  You won’t lose any money but you may have a gap before receiving it.

10      Try to gather all the relevant information before you start the application.  Remember, this is about your young person, not you.  Relevant info includes:

• Bank account info – the account details of the account UC will be paid into (this may be the same as previously)
• Any information about savings accounts – where they are, how much is in them
• Income, work status
• Who lives with you
• Housing costs (if your young person is in supported living these costs are covered by Housing Benefit which will not change and you will not have to enter any details)
• If you have a partner
• Are you in education or training
• Do you have illnesses or disabilities that affect your ability to work

11       The sections you complete are:

• Nationality
• Housing
• Children and other people who live with you
• Work and earnings
• Bank account details
• Monday, savings and investments
• Income other than earnings
• Education and Training
• Health
• Caring for someone

12      If your young person does not have their own bank account you can use your bank account details but you will have to say why the yp is using someone else’s bank account.  I just put My mother is my DWP Appointee as I do not have mental capacity to manage my own finances.

           If you are a DWP Appointee the advice is that the bank account should be in your name not that of the young person.

If you are using a bank account in the young person’s sole name do remember that you don’t have any legal right to access or manage the account unless your young person gives you permission.

Housing

Sophie is in supported living so I didn’t need to add any further information.  There may be further details for other living arrangements.  For example, if you tick social housing you will have to enter your rent and service charge.

Children and other people living with you

A young person in supported living effectively lives alone.

I’m not sure what the answer is otherwise.  But do bear in mind that your young person lives with you (if living at home) not that you live with them.

Work and earnings

A number of tick boxes to indicate earnings or otherwise and whether the young person expects to be in employment in the next month.

Health

I listed all Sophie’s main disabilities:  Down syndrome, ASD, underactive thyroid, learning disability, impaired mobility.

I would be inclined to list everything here.

Caring for someone

This is likely to be a NO!

Money, savings and investments

This is where you should list all savings, investments, etc.  It also includes any backdated benefits payments.

I needed a savings account number which I didn’t have – the absence of it was stopping me continuing with the application so I put in a made up number so I could continue with the application – and corrected it at the end when I reviewed all my answers.

Education and Training

You can’t put in a future date for education/training.  So, if your young person is about to start college it might be as well to put in a past date and then update the information before you submit the application.

In this section there are also a number of questions about whether a young person has lived in care.  We weren’t at all sure what to put for this as one of the descriptions of what ‘lived in care’ means is a young person living with family with support from social care.  In our case Sophie did have a care package from social care (albeit just a few hours a week!) so I said yes to these questions.

I have no idea whether this is correct – I will update these notes should I find out!

My gut feeling is that these questions pertain to young people who were actually in the care system as there is additional support for young people leaving care.  However, I don’t believe that saying yes will lead to any difficulties.

Income other than earnings

The first question asks about disability benefits – that will be PIP for most of our young people so tick that box.  And any others that might be relevant but it’s likely to just be the first box.

13      When you have completed all the sections you will be able to review your answers – each section asks if the information is correct or if you want to change something.  The displayed info may not be all the detail so do click to open the full answer.

14      You can stop at this point if you are not quite ready to submit.  I think I had to do the review of my answers again after exiting before pressing the submit button.  Whether that’s quite true or not (can’t quite recall) you can check your answers more than once before you commit!

15      ID verification:  once you submit your application the next step is to complete an ID verification.  If you have the necessary documents you can do this online but for most of our young people you will have to go through a process with an actual person.

16      After submitting the claim and saying that I could not do the ID verification online I got a message to say that I would be contacted by phone.

A few days later I hadn’t yet been contacted apart from a message in the online journal saying I will be contacted so I added a note to the journal asking about an appointment for the ID check.  Another parent had an email with a date for a telephone call.  You would expect the process to be the same for everyone but this doesn’t seem to be the case

17      You will be asked to accept your claimant commitment and to answer some equality questions.

18      Check the online journal regularly as this is where your progress with your application is listed and where messages will be posted.

ID Verification

To complete the ID Verification online your young person would need a passport; a recent self assessment and credit reference information.  It’s more likely than not that most of our young people will not have at least 2 of these pieces of ID.

Having said that, the ID verification was really about me rather than Sophie so logically if you have 2 or more of these forms of ID then you should be able to complete the verification online.  This wouldn’t verify the young person so not sure how that would work – you may still have to take some ID to the Job Centre.

There’s a long list of other documents you can use for the ID verification here:  https://www.gov.uk/jobcentre-plus-interview.

It turns out that as Sophie’s DWP Appointee the ID check was actually a check on me!  However, I did need some ID for Sophie – I had her passport and I wasn’t asked for anything more.  The parent who had a phone call just needed to confirm her address and a couple of other details.  She’s not sure if she will be called into the jobcentre.

If you are not doing this application as your young person’s DWP Appointee, ie they are doing it themselves with your support, then there may be different requirements for ID.

I showed my passport; gave my NI number; and the bank card for the account the benefit will be paid into.  For Sophie, I just showed her passport.  I had my DWP Appointee certificate but I was not asked for it.

I did go with several more forms of ID for myself and a range of documents either to or about Sophie – the idea being to confirm her ID with a range of info from different sources when taken together would be difficult to refute:

• Passport
• Tenancy agreement
• Old savings account book
• Recent letter to me about Sophie’s ESA
• PIP annual update letter
• Letter from the LA about her contribution towards her care support
• Housing benefit decision notice
• Care and support plan – from social care and from her care provider
• Invoices for care and support from her care provider
• Very old certificate of pay and taxable benefit notice

I had a notification in the journal and a link to a page with a list of acceptable id.

Journal

The Journal is how you will communicate with UC and them with you.  You may get text or email notifications (this is a setting on your account) about some notes in the journal but not all.

So, while your application is in progress I would check the journal several times a week.  I was advised that once payment starts I should only need to check once a week or so.

Where does the mail go to?

When you created the account you put in your young person’s address and there was no space to put in your address.  I asked a question about this and the answer is that there is no mail – it all goes through the journal.

When will you get the first payment?

This is going to vary depending on when you submitted the application but once the date is determined it will be the same date each month.

Example:  I submitted Sophie’s application on 29 August and her first payment date is going to be 5 October and then the 5^th of each month thereafter.  So, that’s 5 weeks from submission to first payment.

Apparently, I will get a notification of the payment and the breakdown on 1 October before the total amount in a single payment on 5 October.  This via the journal – nothing will be sent out to me.

The breakdown is important as while the money comes as a single payment it may be made up of 1, 2 or 3 different elements and without the breakdown you would find it difficult to be certain you have the right payment.

UC has 2 elements:  basic element and LCWRA (or health) element

Additionally, you may have a transitional element.  If your young person received the severe disability premium (SDP) with ESA this will be paid as an additional element equivalent to the amount they would have received via ESA.

It’s important to remember that UC is paid monthly not 4 weekly (although you can request to remain on fortnightly payments).  So, the basic element and LCWRA element are monthly amounts.  The SDP was paid fortnightly so you need to multiply the weekly amount by 52 and then divide by 12 to get the monthly amount.

Current amounts

Basic UC:     £316.98 for under 25s; £400.14 for 25 and over

LCWRA:       £423.27

SDP:            £82.90 pw = £4310.80 pa = £359.23 pcm

ESA, support group: £161.75 pw = £8411 pa = £700.91 pcm

 What now?

On the webinar I did in July they did warn us that the LCWRA payment sometimes gets forgotten.  It shouldn’t, our young people are moving from an existing claim which includes this element but apparently it does happen.

Just to be clear our young people do not need to go through any further assessment to receive the LCWRA element – no fit notes, no assessment form, etc.  The move from ESA to UC is not an opportunity for reassessment.  So if the LCWRA element doesn’t get paid it will need to be chased up but there should not be any delay because of any form of assessment.

Quick update:  This morning, Friday 19 September, I received 3 letters about Sophie’s ESA.  Two letters were addressed to both of us and one to just me.  They were about:

• The contributory element of ESA being taxable and that £0.00 of Sophie’s ESA was taxable! Obviously, she’s not getting the contributory benefit
• That an amount was being paid into the nominated bank account (for ESA)
• That Sophie’s ESA was finishing because of her UC claim and that the amount specified in the other letter was covering a 2 week period since her last ESA payment up to the start of her UC payment

I will update this document in a couple of weeks when we’ve got the breakdown of her payment and have seen an actual payment.  If that is all correct then that will be my final update.  If it’s not right then there might be more!

Update 01/10/2025

So, I got the notification of Sophie’s payment today – I had to logon to the account, no email to say I had a notification.  This is broken down into 3 amounts:

• Standard allowance – £400.14 (Sophie is 27)
• LCWRA – £423.27
• Transitional protection – £236.74
• Total – £1060.15

I originally said here that I didn’t think that amount was correct – but it is.  Sophie’s total income from ESA and SDP amounted to £1060.14 so this is the amount that UC guarantee to pay her so she wouldn’t be worse off on UC than on ESA.

The transitional element is not the total of the additional SDP (£359) as the UC basic and LCWRA rates are higher than the amount she received on ESA.  On UC with both elements she would receive £823.41 so the transitional element is £236.74 as this is the amount that brings her benefits up to the same total as she had on ESA with SDP (£1060.14).

If your young person was in the support group for ESA but did not receive the severe disability premium (the most likely scenario unless they are not living at home) then they will not see a transitional element but will be better off on UC than they were on ESA – how much better off depends on their age.  Here’s the figures again:

ESA support group: £700.91 pcm

UC basic element:   £316.98 for under 25s; £400.14 for 25 and over

LCWRA:                 £423.27

Total under 25:        £740.25

Total over 25: £823.41

The figures will be different for young people in the work group of ESA.  I’m afraid that I don’t know what the rates were for that group – but in UC they will only be entitled to the basic element – but they will have few conditions attached to their claim.

On the webinar I did about this migration in July we were advised to look out for the LCWRA payment not being made the first month but that’s fine here.

The record also says that the money will be paid by 8pm on 5 October.

That was a Sunday and payments are not made at weekends or on bank holidays – the payment was made on Friday 3 October.

Deductions

UC can make deductions from your benefit amount.  If you have been overpaid at some point or receive another benefit then that amount can be deducted from your UC.

It should show in the payment information in the journal before the payment is made.

Contributory ESA

Most of our young people have only been receiving income based ESA but it appears that some have also been receiving contributory ESA.  I’m not sure how!

If your young person has been receiving contributory ESA – ie actual money, not just national insurance contributions – then this amount will be deducted from their UC.

You may be asked to attend an interview – face to face or telephone – to determine if your young person is eligible for contributory new style ESA.  This doesn’t seem to be anything to worry about but I’m not sure if the interview is with the parent if you are the DWP Appointee or the young person.

I understand that a claim has to be made for new style contributory ESA and a claimant commitment accepted but as far as I can tell this is not onerous – I think the commitment amounts to you agreeing to let the DWP know of any changes.

Just a note here about new style contributory ESA as we recommend that parents of young people turning 16 (who have PIP or DLA) do actually apply for the benefit as credits only.  The purpose here is that it triggers a work capability assessment and if that determines that a young person has a limited capability for work (LCW or LCWRA) then they are able to claim UC when they leave school even if going on to another educational placement.  Young people without this status are not able to claim UC while still in education.

I mention it here, not because it is relevant to the ESA to UC migration process, but because contributory ESA has come up with a couple of parents and I want to clarify that we’re not talking about it with the same purpose as we recommend for 16 year olds.  When a 16 year old claims for credits only they do not receive any money – it is purely to trigger the WCA to ensure they can claim UC in the future while still in education.