Cost of Living disregard

Hi,

Can you clarify this one, please. My local welfare rights team told me that, as long as TOTAL capital had never dropped below £1850 (the total of all col payments received) then col is permanantly disregarded.)

On that basis, i put in an MR for my son's closed claim.

I was clear with the welfare rights officer that i had used the col payments to pay our energy bills.

I now see, on another forum, someone saying if DWP see the col payment landing in an account and then leaving a few days later, it is considered spent. And not disregarded.

If this is correct, my son's claim was correctly closed.

Each col payment arriving in his account left immediately after and went direct to Octopus energy.

The welfare rights officer said it didn't matter where the money went, as long as total capital didn't drop. (It didn't)

Needless to say, i haven't heard a thing about my MR. They haven't even been in touch for bank statements yet.

But i need to know where i stand with this col. Have i been misinformed?

Sorry for confusion.

The person who informed me by telephone that DWP did not care what happened to the COL payments was someone on the welfare rights team at my local council here in Scotland.
I specifically told him that i had spent the COL payments on energy as didn't know what else to do with them and that seemed to be what they were paid out for.
He definitely said that was fine and, as long as TOTAL capital has never dropped below £1850, I should put in an MR.

Which i did.

I then see on the Scope forum someone posted that DWP is refusing to disregard COL on the basis that they moved each of their COL payments into another account. Because they can prove it is in another account and never spent, they are going to tribunal as they can find no rule about not being allowed to move the COL payments into a savings account.

In their case DWP is not communicating with them at all and is refusing to state why they are not disregarding.

My case is different. And a poster on that forum says that if DWP can prove that the COL payment went into my son's account and straight back out again, they will argue it's been spent and will not be disregarded.

Well - that is what happened. As each payment landed, i transferred that exact amount to Octopus energy and that clearly shows on the bank statements.

I tried to look up all the legislation myself to see if i could see any mention of this situation, but i could not.

DWP have not been in touch at all since i submitted my MR in January. So, at the moment, they haven't got as far as looking at any statements (they haven't even requested them yet)
But i would like to know where i stand with this one because, if they do not have to apply the disregard, then my son's capital did exceed £16k and my MR will fail.
It is only below £16k with a £1850 deduction.

Does that make more sense?

Hi David,

Sorry, there seems to still be a misunderstanding.

I will try to explain it a better way - my son had round about 13k in savings accounts correctly declared and all the deductions made from the outset of his UC claim.

He also often had a couple of thousand pounds unspent in his current account. The amount there fluctuated up and down, sometimes as high as 3k, sometimes down to the low hundreds.
But never nil or overdrawn.

I never delared that as i never thought of it as savings and that is what's causing the current issue.

So - obvs with it hitting 3k, added to the 13k in savings accounts, that is what's closed the claim.

I then found out about COL. And, once £1850 is deducted from the current account balance, total capital never did exceed 16k.

So, i put in the MR. Obvs, as i had not declared current account capital over the past 6 years, i am expecting a call or letter asking for all bank statements back to 2019.


So - what the bank statement will show is (not exact figures, this is an example) is a high bank balance of, say, 2k.

Then a COL payment comes in £301.

2 days later a payment for exactly £301 leaves the account to Octopus energy.

The total capital my son has is still well over £1850 but will DWP argue that it was their £301 that was spent?

And it was spent. That is what i told my local welfare rights officer - that i had removed the COL payments from my son's account and put them into my energy account where they were spent on energy.

Because, whilst my son has lots of capital, the rest of the family were struggling to pay the fuel bills and this seemed like a sensible use for the money.

Of course it is not possible for DWP to prove that it was THEIR £301 that went to Octopus, since one lot of £301 looks identical to another. My son could have kept theirs and spent his earned income on energy. But, equally, i can't prove it wasn't their's.

So - welfare rights said as long as total capital had not dropped, that proves it hasn't been spent.

But it doesn't look good for me does it - with each col payment going off to octopus?!


Forget about the other person - they were correctly advised on Scope. Their situation is different.

I can prove total capital stayed above £1850.

But the money that went to octopus is spent.