ESA if Prior 2 Tax Years No Job/No Benefit?

Can you Apply for ESA If Any Of Below Life Circumstances?

Can you qualify for contribution-based support component or general ESA if you have been unemployed and not receiving benefits for 2 tax years before application?

With permanent full or qualifying over 16 hours part time continuous work before then for decades of life, so paying NI contributions.

Can you get income based ESA if your savings are ten grand (which the government agree is the basic funds needed for survival eating money by the basic tax allowance rising to £10,000 in 2014 budget and is now £9440)?

Again if unemployed for over 2 tax years and receiving no benefit.

Can you get ESA if you are getting a small works pension far, far below the basic tax allowance?

And finally can you get the support component of ESA if the previous or same tax year, you were refused Disability Living Allowance (now replaced by Personal Independence Payments) just by paper application and not seen by any assessors?

I loved one answer in another forum I found elsewhere where the advice was apply for this or apply for that or finally last option was to become economically inactive.

I thought great, become economically inactive and then a miracle happens:

- Free Rent or Mortgage forever and No Bedroom Tax / Housing Benefit Cap (latter went to landlord and not the poor, so even less money in an economy in recession)

- Free House Maintenance from local traders to keep the roof over your head

- Council Tax 100% exemption

- Free water/electric/gas for life

- Free petrol/car tax/MOT for rest of natural that is sole means of getting out of house to buy food

- Free food from any local supermarket, bakers or chippy or Chinese or Curry house so can do the luxury of eating

- Automatic state pension returns for women at 60 and 65 for men, for those with early private or council works pension due to all Austerity Job Cuts, when most such early retired pensions are between a grand and four grand a year.

- Or even Automatic Dole for over 50s/disabled/chronic sick with not a cat in hell's chance of getting a job

Who would employ someone:

- in the bog ever 5 minutes away from workstation,

- in the bog through out the day to change from being aromatically challenged incontinent,

- off sick often or away to doctors/hospital appointments most months, and

- needing a nap every couple of hours from the sheer exhaustion of living in pain.


Hope my post helps the millions in this situation in life.

Hi Chris,

To be eligible for contributory ESA the claimant must have made a certain number of NI payments in the previous 2 full tax years prior to the claim. On the whole, these payments are only made when someone is in paid employment. The number of years for which contributions have been paid prior to this is irrelevant when considering contributory benefits such as ESA.

People who are not entitled to contributory ESA can apply for income-related ESA if they think they might be eligible. Assets and savings over £16000 (and/or a partner who works more than 24 hours a week) would render one ineligible for this benefit. If assets/savings are between £6000 and £16000, ESA would be paid at a reduced level, depending on the amount of assets held. Below £6000 there is no deduction in the amount paid.

24 hour work rule for ESA(IR)

Asset rule for ESA(IR)

Beware of spending your savings too quickly. If it were judged that a claimant had spent their own money rashly, purely in order to gain benefit, they could be judged as if they still had the money.

Being denied DLA does not have any direct impact on the ESA claim process. However, a claimant might need to show that parts of the DLA assessment is inaccurate if it would be in conflict with the claims being made for ESA.

Contributary ESA is reduced for any private pension over £85 per week, for income-related ESA the whole of the pension would be taken into account and counted as income.

I hope I have answered all your queries. If there is anything I have missed, or you have any further questions, please come back and ask them on this topic/thread as it helps us to have all information in one place. You will find it easily in future if you make it a favourite on your web browser, or bookmark it, now