Permitted work question

aliboo64

Hi I am severely disabled and on ESA in the support group.  I also get Child Tax Credit (for my daughter who has CP), Council Tax Benefit and PIP for myself, DLA for her.

I wondered if I am able to earn the allowed amount through Permitted Work? If so are any of my benefits affected?  Thank you

Jean Eveleigh

I am allowed to work through permitted work.

I get Disability Living allowance and Incapacity benefit pays my National insurance contributions but doesn't give me any cash in hand; My partner gets Income support for us both, Carers allowance (for looking after me) and together we get Housing and Council tax benefit.

I work 4 hours per week and earn £48 I am only allowed to keep £20 per week of my salary the rest is deducted straight out of our Income support claim, every four months i have to send in all the payslips for the previous months to prove my earnings are stable.

As I am aware any earnings you get over the £20 per week would be taken straight out of your ESA and your Council tax and Tax credits could also be affected

BenefitsTrainingCo

Hi aliboo64, 

Your situation is a bit different to Jean's, and I'll explain what you could do. As you are in the support group, you can do permitted work for an indefinite period. You could either earn up to £20 a week (called the permitted work lower limit), or you could earn up to £115.50 a week, as long as you work less than 16 hours a week (called the permitted work higher limit). 

Earnings from permitted work in ESA are completely disregarded for Housing Benefit and income-related ESA itself. That means up to £115.50 a week of earnings can be disregarded (you can't earn more than that and still get ESA). And as long as you get income-related ESA, you are 'passported' to the maximum Child Tax Credit. Council Tax Reduction does depend on the scheme your local council runs, but I would expect them to ignore earnings from permitted work too (or just 'passport' you because you're on income-related ESA). Most councils do ignore permitted work earnings, but it's a good idea to check with yours! Housing Benefit is definitely unaffected by these earnings.

Hi Jean,

Jean, you're in a different position. Income Support only ignores £20 a week of earnings from permitted work. If you have limited capability for work (and you are getting national insurance credits for this) you could consider whether you might be better off with you claiming income-related Employment and Support Allowance instead of your partner claiming Income Support. That would allow all of your earnings to be disregarded (for 52 weeks, or indefinitely if you are in the 'support' group for ESA). But I'd suggest getting a better off calculation first because Income Support can be worth more for disabled people than Employment and Support Allowance in some circumstances.

You could use the benefits calculator or try making an appointment at a Citizens Advice Bureau. Or do post back here and we can try to help if you have enough information.

Will

Jean Eveleigh

Hi Will,

Thanks for your repose, we will stay as we are until the DWP start to move us over onto different benefits as we are quite stable with our income and expenditure at the moment and are able to cover all our needs without being in debt and we do not wish to rock the boat so to speak and inadvertently end up in a worse position financially either and having to appeal until absolutely necessary.

Although my illness is progressive and degenerative, we have been able to stabilise me at the moment and again any negative financial implications could affect the ability to remain stable in my health which would then have a more serious knock on effect in other areas of our life and mental health etc. as well.

If I need to I will come back to you for advice when we start to be passported onto PIP and Universal Credit which is what the disability support officer at the job-centre has told us will happen at some point, and we await with the same dread as every one else every time we get a letter from the DWP until it is opened and we know what they want from us.

I am dreading the Work Capability and PIP assessments and we have purchased hidden cameras so that we can video the entire assessment to have proof when we need to appeal that our version of events and my health status do not match the assessors claims.

Once again many thanks for your input.