The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has identified 22,500 cases where claimants who were underpaid Employment and Support Allowance (ESA) when they transferred from incapacity benefits may also have been underpaid Housing Benefit (HB).
The new edition of LA Welfare Direct asks local authorities to consider whether Housing Benefit arrears are due from 2011-2019.
The DWP wrote: “We have identified 22,500 cases that were not receiving the maximum rate of HB by matching HB data between 2011 and 2019 with ESA IBR (Incapacity Benefit Reassessment) LEAP exercise management information. These are the cases we want LAs to look at to see if they should be on maximum HB.”
It went on to add that this corrective exercise will begin from the week commencing Monday, March 14.
Incapacity Benefit Reassessment corrective exercise
The DWP began migrating Incapacity Benefit, Severe Disability Allowance, Income Support cases to ESA from 2011 onwards.
Entitlement to ESA Income Related (IR) was not initially considered if Income Support was not in payment at the point of migration, the DWP explained in the bulletin.
This led to the DWP Incapacity Benefit Reassessment LEAP exercise which has repaid 112,000 ESA claimants a total of £589 million as of January 16, 2020.
The guidance explained: “We originally presented details of the LEAP exercise and its potential impact on HB to the Practitioners’ Operational Group (POG) on 20 February 2020 but further action was put on hold due to the COVID-19 pandemic. We are now able to share details of the impact on HB.
“If the cases affected by the ESA IBR LEAP exercise had been correctly awarded ESA (IR) and the claimant had also been claiming HB, they would have been entitled to passported HB at the maximum rate.”
However, it also pointed out that “many claimants affected by the exercise, who were also claiming HB were already on the maximum rate of HB, but some were not”.
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