Terms & Conditions

[Anonymous]

If a couple are receiving incapacity benefit at a couples rate and the partner starts work, but the claimant then receives single rate incapacity benefit, do they qualify for an extended payment?

[Anonymous]

Sounds like your claimant is getting Incapacity Benefit because he or she is incapable of work, and it included an increase for an adult dependant – the claimant’s spouse or civil partner. Because the spouse or civil partner is no longer dependant, the rate is reduced and it no longer includes the addition. But the claimant remains entitled to IB. If this is correct, HB does not end in accordance with Reg 78 and there is therefore no extended payment. The partner’s earnings should therefore be included in the claimant’s income (and the dependant adult increase removed) from the week after s/he started work.

[Anonymous]

I think an extended payment is payable, if the partners wages take them out of HB, and their job is going to last 5 weeks plus and the claimant and/or the partner have been on IB for at least 26 weeks then surely EP is payable?? Or am I, yet again, reading this all wrong !!!

[Anonymous]

They were getting the higher couple flat rate of long term ib of £138.20 and now he just gets the middle single flat rate of 86.75. This doesn’t seem to be an increase for an adult dependant but not sure? Does this change anything?

[Anonymous]

Those are strange figures. The £138.20 looks as if it could be made up of:

– basic long term IB £76.45
– maximum age related addition £16.05
– dependant adult addition £45.70

I cannot see any other combination of figures that would get to that amount. If the claimant’s spouse/civil partner has started work, he can no longer receive the £45.70 addition for her. He should therefore revert to £92.50 a week; but he hasn’t!

Is this a case where the claimant has been incapable of work since 1995? If so, I think the rate of age-related additions and dependant spouse additions is more generous: that would possibly explain it. It could be that he has the pre-1995 lower rate age addition, and has just lost the pre-1995 rate of spouse addition. I don’t know enough about the pre-1995 figures to be able to say for sure.

As far as Extended Payments go, Reg 78 says that HB comes to an end where the claimant ceaes to be entitled to IB, and Reg 73 says that an extended payment follows from that. The problem here is that the claimant has no ceased to be entitled to IB.

The purpose of the EP for IB/SDA claimants is to make things easier for people who have been incapable of work in the long term to get back into a job; the income of partners doesn’t have any direct bearing on that. So I can see why the EP Reg only fires if IB/SDA has stopped completely.

[Author]

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