Moving home - how will it affect my claim?

[Eusabius]

Possibly not in actual ££'s paid in your case, but it's not that simple a comparison because you are moving to a different type of rental with a different rent.

What matters is not what the overall ££s of benefit paid is, but what you will be left with after the rent has been paid.

As explained above - You are moving from a Social Rental to a Private Rental and so for the new rental the UC Housing Element will be capped at the LHA.
Social Rentals don't have that LHA cap, they pay the full rent less any bedroom tax. (Private rentals don't have bedroom tax).

If the Private Rent is above LHA then you have to make up the difference from elsewhere.

In your particular case as the private rent is above LHA then that means that the increase you get with UC will have to be used to top-up the rent.
(If you had moved to another Social Rental then the LHA would not apply and you would definitely be better off).

You (almost) always end up with more in UC in a like-for-like move, - but yours is not like-for-like - your are going from Social renting to Private renting.

So looking more closely at your particular case:

You say your new private rent is £152 a week, which equates to £541.66 a month (x52/12)

The 1-bed LHA rate/cap for Shropshire is £399.98 a month, so that is what you will get paid as UC-HE. Which leaves £141.68 a month top-up to the rent needed from elsewhere.

However your UC Standard Allowance+LCWRA will be £151.64 a month more than ESA SG was - which will more than cover the rent top-up needed and still leave you with £10 more a month to spend after paying the rent.
(And even more if you get the Carer Element added to UC).

All this may (probably will) take a month or two to settle down.

Note- As also said above you need to check what the Council Tax (with any reduction) is going to be at the new place.
If it's more that you were paying before then that 'extra' £10 may be eaten up by having to pay more CT, but that would be a consequence of moving house to a new council and not because of changing benefits. (ie. You would have to pay the new CT even if you didn't change benefits).

Thanks for your detailed answer nukecad, about which I'll say more in a moment. Firstly, though, I don't think I made myself clear in my question. What my brother was saying to me was this: the figures you gave for the comparison between what we were getting on ESA and what we are likely to get on UC (£784.32 a month as opposed to £935.96 a month) means that we will be getting less on UC, because the Housing Element is included in that figure of £935.96. I have told him that the housing element is not included in that figure. That's correct isn't it?

Re: the rent where we were, and where we are. Where we were was a 2 bedroomed housing association flat. Our rent was around £123 a week, and we received around £95 in Housing Benefit. so, because of the 'bedroom tax' and service charges we were having to make up about £28 a week to the rent. So, as it turns out, in our new 1 bedroomed private place we will be making up roughly the same amount.

[nukecad]

That's correct - the £784.32 to £935.96 comparision did not include any amount for housing (or carer premium) - it was a straight ESA SG to UC-LCWRA comparison and didn't include anything else.

If you look at where I gave it in post #9 it says:

Leaving out the Housing Element and any possible Carer Element for now.
With the couples Standard Allowance and LCWRA element you would get £935.96 a month with UC, so £151.64 a month better off than your current ESA from that aspect.
If you get the Carer Element added then another £162.92 better off.

The figure that you should get with the new UC-Housing Element added, and if you claim the Carer Element as well, is given in post #6. (£1498.86).

Yes, it's a similar top-up amount, because of the higher rent and the affect of the LHA cap.
But because of the increase in benefits you will get by moving to UC you should now have more money left after you have made the top-up. (and much more if you get that Carer Element added).

It might help to think of it this way:
Previously you had to pay the top-up out of your ESA SG or PIP money - but the increase you get with moving to UC-LCWRA (as opposed to ESA SG) is now covering the top-up. Leaving you better off overall after paying the rent.

It's swings and roundabouts, less paid as benefits specifically for housing but more in UC paid overall which (more than) covers the difference.

PS. It is a bit unusual to see someone moving from Social Rental to Private, usually it's the other way round.

PPS. Are you keeping your CB ESA open (which will be deducted £ for £ from the UC), or closing it and just going with UC?

[Eusabius]

Thanks for that nukecad. That's what I thought, and can now clarify to my brother.

We don't get CB ESA. It was Income Based.

We submitted our UC claim on Monday. Our normal day for receiving my ESA would be this Thursday.....I'm hoping that we will still get this, based on what you said previously about the 2 week run on of the legacy benefit. Fingers crossed for tomorrow

[Eusabius]

Re: moving from social housing to private - we have had neighbours from hell for a good many years. My brother, who now lives a few doors down from us, has an excellent live-in landlord who just happened to own this cottage, which became vacant 2 months ago. Just a bit of luck for us really.

[nukecad]

Good reason for the move.

Hope everything goes smoothly, but as I say it can take a couple of months for things to settle down with a change to UC even when it all goes right.

If there are problems, or something unusual, it can take longer - but one thing that has happened with covid is that with all the new UC claims made in the last six or seven months the DWP staff now have a lot of experience of migrations from legacy benefits.
It was that lack of experience that could cause problems, along with anything unusual that the computer can't handle - "Computer says No".

[nukecad]

Eusabius.

Please put a short transcript of the section of the phone call that you are bothered about here. Redacting any personal information of course.

One of the reasons that we don't (normally) answer questions by PM (and don't have a PM facility on this forum) is that it may help others who have a similar problem/question to see what is going on.
This is a forum and not a private advice service.
I made a one-off exception in your case, because you seemed to want to ask something with personal details, but you should ask any further questions on here.

[Eusabius]

Hi. Yes, sorry about that.

I think the matter has now, hopefully, been sorted it. After we submitted our UC claim we were were given telephone appointments to verify our ID. During this the person listed the elements which we would receive under UC - the standard couple element, the housing element, and the carer's element. He said that somewhere down the line I would "probably be called in for an assessment", following which I "might be entitled to some more money", but not to 'hold my breath' because this could be many months away. When I spoke to my work coach the following day I told him that the person I spoke to the day before had not mentioned the LCWRA element, and that the CAB had advised me to ask him to make sure that this was added to my claim. The work coach told me that he was making a note to say that, yes, this should be added. So hopefully it will be.

[nukecad]

Yes it's just a training problem.

Some of the new staff who have been transfered/recruited to UC because of all the millions of new claims due to covid don't quite understand yet how the Limited Capability element gets migrated from ESA to UC.
They have had quick training that only really covers brand new claims being made, with migrations being briefly mentioned but not in detail.
So they just assume from their training that anyone making a claim and asking for a Limited Capability element will have to have a WCA.
Your work coach seems to have had better training, or learned from experience.

The UC application should have asked if you had an existing ESA claim and if you say yes they process it with ESA to get the details sent across.
That could be a slow process in the past as the details had to be sent by post on a specific form (the two computers wouldn't talk to each other) but I believe that they have got better at it now.
If you are unlucky then it may still be a month or two before the LCWRA gets added, but if that does happen then it should be backdated (and backpaid) to the date you claimed UC.