UK: Disability benefits (UC, ESA and PIP) - news and updates 2024 and 2025

[JohnTheJack]

Well, I think I've had a result but am not sure yet.

The Welsh government runs a 'Warm Home' scheme with some quite big grants available. I think for some they will install solar panels and air-source heat pumps.

Eligibility is quite limited, depending first on the house's EPC rating. If it's 'E' then you get everything (if you're on low income), but if it's 'D' then even if you're on low income you only get it if you have certain health conditions. 'Fatigue illness' like ME is, I was told, not included.

I emailed the Welsh government and got a reply today:

The creation of the health conditions pilot extended eligibility under the Nest scheme to home energy efficiency measures to people living on a low income and who have been diagnosed with a respiratory or circulatory health condition. The health conditions eligibility included conditions recognised by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) as being at greater risk of ill health and premature death from living in a cold home including respiratory disease.

Although ME was not recognised as a condition identified within the NICE guidance at the time when we embedded the pilot, our understanding is ME can be exacerbated by coughs, colds and other respiratory conditions. If a person is vulnerable to respiratory illness, they would be eligible under the scheme.

We recently launched the new iteration of the Warm Homes Nest scheme and we will review the health conditions periodically to ensure they remain complaint with updated NICE guidelines.

I find it a little opaque, but it reads to me as though they are now including ME.

I'm going to call Nest later and try again and see if I am now indeed eligible.

 

[JohnTheJack]

Well, I think I've had a result but am not sure yet.

The Welsh government runs a 'Warm Home' scheme with some quite big grants available. I think for some they will install solar panels and air-source heat pumps.

Eligibility is quite limited, depending first on the house's EPC rating. If it's 'E' then you get everything (if you're on low income), but if it's 'D' then even if you're on low income you only get it if you have certain health conditions. 'Fatigue illness' like ME is, I was told, not included.

I emailed the Welsh government and got a reply today:

The creation of the health conditions pilot extended eligibility under the Nest scheme to home energy efficiency measures to people living on a low income and who have been diagnosed with a respiratory or circulatory health condition. The health conditions eligibility included conditions recognised by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) as being at greater risk of ill health and premature death from living in a cold home including respiratory disease.

Although ME was not recognised as a condition identified within the NICE guidance at the time when we embedded the pilot, our understanding is ME can be exacerbated by coughs, colds and other respiratory conditions. If a person is vulnerable to respiratory illness, they would be eligible under the scheme.

We recently launched the new iteration of the Warm Homes Nest scheme and we will review the health conditions periodically to ensure they remain complaint with updated NICE guidelines.

I find it a little opaque, but it reads to me as though they are now including ME.

I'm going to call Nest later and try again and see if I am now indeed eligible.

I can now confirm that ME is a qualifying illness.

 

[Trish]

Well done, @JohnTheJack. I hope this means you can get your home better insulated and heated.

 

[Kitty]

I can now confirm that ME is a qualifying illness.

That's great news.

A government department that listens, too. Feels as if we ought to organise a flag day just to celebrate that!

 

[JohnTheJack]

That's great news.

A government department that listens, too. Feels as if we ought to organise a flag day just to celebrate that!

Yes, and seems actually to have looked for a way to make it qualify.

 

[JohnTheJack]

Well done, @JohnTheJack. I hope this means you can get your home better insulated and heated.

They're going to do a survey. Potentially I could get solar panels and an air pump heater, fully paid.

 

[John Mac]

I'm in receipt of Universal Credit and yesterday I received an email telling me as part of a review of my UC to send them photo IDs (photos of the front and back of my driving licence and a photo of myself holding the driving licence next to my face) plus a driving licence check code from the DVLA allowing the DWP to access my DVLA records. I also had to send my last four months bank statements to them as pdfs. I'm now waiting to see if I need to resend any of them or if they decide I need to send more documents after they review the ones already sent.
I had to complete this by the 2nd January or risk my UC being stopped.
Happy Christmas from the DWP.

 

[Wonko]

I'm going through a UC review ATM.

It was arranged for them to call me on the 16th (of December) when my sister would come round here to handle the call.

No one called, no one has called since, I have left 2 messages in my UC Journal but had no reply so this morning was 'stressful' while waiting to see if any payment went into my bank account.

Made more so by the timing, the payment has always gone int by 12.20am, for nearly 2 years by 12.20am it;s been there.

This morning it was 2.03am.

So now, this UC claimant, housebound who officially is, broke who is by statute and intent thereof, is supposed to be able to organise Christmas, in only 3 shopping days with no delivery slots available. In rammed supermarkets, high streets, and buses, with mobility issues, balance issues, and 'significant' issues managing in a near empty supermarket (as opposed to a rammed supermarket that's been picked clean of everything related to the season).

Three days isn't even enough time to defrost a turkey (what? you thought as someone on UC I might be able to afford a fresh turkey?), and, theoretically, with a fairly small fridge, a defrosting turkey is basically the only thing that fits in it, so no other non essential shopping could possible be ordered (if there were any slots) until the turkey comes out of the fridge.

Obviously the people making such ludicrous decisions have walk in fridges, presumably the new lot, as I am sure that the Christmas payment has been made early in previous years to allow for this sort of thing.

Of course, this is not reality, reality is that I have no life, no car, no kids, no partner, I don't eat out, smoke, drink, or even have a pet - so I have been able to save, and therefore I have been able to mostly organise Christmas here (as well as going over for a dinner at my sisters). About the only thing I am involuntarily short of is soft cheeses, available but double the price of last year, or even a month ago, and I aint paying that, for the sake of tradition.

 

[JellyBabyKid]

I also had to send my last four months bank statements to them as pdfs.

Why?!

This really freaks me out; why is it up to the DWP what I spend my money on?

I am currently going through the UC migration process and in the assessment period between ESA ending and UC starting and panicking at every email that says "check your UC account" after years of issues with the DWP and the jobcentre.

 

[John Mac]

Why?!

Officially it is to show that financially you qualify for UC disability payment i.e. having less than £6,000.
But I am sure they will be going through the statements with a magnifying glass looking for evidence of a "healthy" lifestyle.
I'm beginning now to regret that Skiing holiday last month and that Scuba diving trip I took with Paul Garner!

 

[JemPD]

They're going to do a survey. Potentially I could get solar panels and an air pump heater, fully paid.

be VERY careful if the rec spray foam roof insulation. it makes it impossible to sell yr house! too ill to say more, google it if need more info I'm in hell wit it

 

[JellyBabyKid]

I am sure they will be going through the statements with a magnifying glass

This is what worries me, a lot. What if they don't like the choices I make? I have heard some appalling stories.

I'm beginning now to regret that Skiing holiday last month and that Scuba diving trip I took with Paul Garner!

at least you have kept your sense of humour

 

[JohnTheJack]

be VERY careful if the rec spray foam roof insulation. it makes it impossible to sell yr house! too ill to say more, google it if need more info I'm in hell wit it

Thanks.

 

[tornandfrayed]

https://www.disabilitynewsservice.c...disability-employment-strategy-will-not-work/

What it says on the tin.

The white paper announced: “To tackle poor mental health, the leading driver of ill health-related inactivity, the government has committed to continuing to expand access to NHS Talking Therapies for adults with common mental health conditions in England.”

The white paper claimed that “extensive literature and studies” showed that NHS Talking Therapies improved employment outcomes.

Last month, the new Labour government’s white paper mentioned a forthcoming evaluation of the impact of NHS Talking Therapies.

But when that research was published last week by the Office for National Statistics (ONS), there was no mention of it on the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) website, and no press release issued by work and pensions secretary Liz Kendall.

After three years, there was an increase of just 1.4 percentage points in the probability of someone being a paid employee, and after seven years that had increased to only 1.5 percentage points.

To qualify as being a “paid employee” in the study, someone only needed to have earned more than £0 in a month.

After three years, the average increase in monthly earnings for someone who had completed the treatment was just £17.

 

[Sean]

Since when has being a complete failure ever stopped a government policy?

 

[bicentennial]

This is what worries me, a lot. What if they don't like the choices I make? I have heard some appalling stories.



at least you have kept your sense of humour

I can't keep up with the changes @JellyBabyKid so all i know is out of date but I think once upon a time one could simply black out the itemised rows of expenditure, being private, and just show all the income and balance with name and address and account numbers, these being the only proof needed for a means-tested benefit

Or am i muddling that up, with those other bank statements used as proof of address instead of a utility bill ? No financial detail required, all the financial detail blacked out for security - that was a standard security practice

Does anyone know, if the DWP formally requires any proof of expenditure, where this is written down ? I can't see for what reason.

But how bad has it got on its way to worse since everyone was told TWO YEARS IN ADVANCE to be very, very scared of the next change in the rules, started around 1999, so 25yrs of curated escalating apprehension inflicted to date

It may help just to black out all financial outgoings (details of recipient and amount) but leave all of the incoming column and balances visible, assuming that IS a normal thing to do when showing a private bank statement, and IF pressed say you had no idea it mattered, is it really necessary, no-one told you it was necessary, and what expenditure are they screening for.

For market research they need to give out Clubcards like Tescos do, wtih rewards points in exchange for intimate knowledge of customer spend. Maybe skip straight to the food vouchers and put us all back in the poor-house. But they can't outrun the pandemic so no-one knows what the future will bring, the future became an unknown quantity after Brexit then Covid, took all the known future away.

i saw a news report that listed the usual proofs of income, and savings, and "any other transactions that may seem out of the ordinary or suspicious." by which i take it they mean extraordinary gifts or regular payments in (regular was classed as income). They do seek out assets held in gambling dens but thats a laugh because there is nothing to gamble.

If flambozzled i would ring the national (not local) C.A.B helpline to ask if I am entitled to redact my sundry expenditure. The only embarrassment i ever had on my statement was when a friend who had no bank card asked me to place her fone order for fishnet lingerie. I thought if i would never live it down.

I have also had a home help supervisor pick through my dirty laundry to show her manager when i complained of being help less. Dirty rotters. At least my home is private now. I think. Maybe

Spoiler: 4 pictures.Always with you

 

[bicentennial]

QUALITY CONTROL > DON'T BE A TOSSER > LITTER BUG


tornandfrayed cited UK White Paper


UK White Papers NHS & Cochrane to defy DWP

Since when has being a complete failure ever stopped a government policy?

Since the DWP got quality control on its outsourced tenders ?

UK White Paper is convinced by extensive studies (see a Cochrane literary review maybe) that psychotherapy delivers a Return to Work program on the NHS so scale it up and all the upset people can Return to Health and Work (the budget was snaffled from the psychiatric hospitals & DWP last year)

Major mental illness won't get a look in (the psychiatrists got very upset). Police took up the slack but were not consulted. DWP went very quiet. Their secretary was struck dumb on reception. What a croc.

After 3 to 7yrs : psychotherapy increased employment by 1.4 to 1.5%, maybe, sorry probably, no figures available for sure, but probably the world can expect this world class program to find work for 14 happy confident people in every 1000, in Frimley alone this cost £4m mind you it also got spent on psychotherapy to support in Long Term Conditions, and the work found had to pay more than £0 a month, which resulted in wages of, on average, £17 a month, probably. Straight up, i am not kidding, ask Boris, those were the outcomes

The networked EXECUTIVE connectivity problem (intranet and internet) is that - happily - the DWP set stringent quality controls upon the grants doled out to peeps who tender for the Return to Work programs, it requires evidence of efficacy (outcomes)

So as I see it, the NHS stepped in to fill this quality-controlled gap, but with less basis and called it a Return to Health program instead, already, its a great cashcow as it implies a Return to Work that will balance the books (in my opinion its also very aryanically sanitising, Boy Scouts don't make that grade). NHS tenders also fill the quality-controlled gap controlled by SS Social Service) eg Community Care

Maybe some wriggle-room remains as happens with Govt outsourcing, but the sloppiest sub-contractors do say they prefer NHS contracts to those fussy SS and DWP contracts.

Spoiler: Can the government govern the NHS when it wants to?

i am still given to understand that my government cannot govern the NHS to deliver for M.E / CFS, because the NHS is no longer governed by my government, it has a separated, impenetrable executive network, so the government cannot even broadly promise to deliver a health service, nor even mention healthcare on its front-page plan, let alone scale up healthcare, rather promise to better my life by inspiring leadership

And yet my government can govern the NHS to scale up an NHS-executed program to modify behaviour because it activates perturbed and disturbed people by tackling them psychically to obtain an aryan health of mind

This excludes uncommon mental disturbance, ending the hard-won provision of -psychotherapy for eg schizophrenia, reverting to the archaic veto on any such thing, presumably because it takes for ever, as does M.E / CFS

Are chronic services for chronic illness and disability being phased out under guise of that old fake-austerity chestnut, do any clinics even do long term monitoring by now, is the rheumatoid nurse defunct too? I see no austerity when govt can afford to pay sub-contractors to turn a profit, while farming out also the essential services most people can't afford, niche markets until subsidised on a national scale, but this psychotherapy knock-off also wants to expand into other territories

 

[bicentennial]

Can the DWP balance books by requiring the Return to Health and Work budget to return Remploy in-house, why profit Maximus instead when its not sustainable, why not show a reduction in the income supports that won't be reduced by Covid, get it done?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remploy
https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/remploy-ltd
https://www.disabilitynewsservice.c...ngs-over-remploy-workers-as-dwp-funding-ends/

which reminds me:

(my bolding)
If they hadn't scrapped the disability employment scheme in the first place, they wouldn't need to reinvent it.

I know several former miners and steelworkers who benefitted from the old scheme following injuries or redundancies. Slightly implausibly, given their broad accents and rough diamond approach, one became an accountant, one an actor, and another an Anglican priest. But it takes time, skill and resources to support people like them, who struggle even to imagine how they could rebuild their self-respect, let alone succeed in taking on a totally different identity. The advisors sometimes pulled it off because they knew how the local economy worked, they built relationships with employers and training agencies, and—above all—their clients and their managers trusted their judgement.

None of that will be the case now. It'll be call centres staffed by people who've had four weeks of training, who know nothing about how the local economy and community works. And it'll be as much use as a chocolate fireguard to people who aren't actually capable of work in the first place.

@Kitty, may I ask did the steel-workers and miners need CBT to rehabilitate their scope and is there any chance of a feasible program design reviving that old scheme ?

 

[bicentennial]

A Contract Award Notice by NHS FRIMLEY ICB
explains the dire straits being serviced by a (not-for-profit) £4m TalkPlus contract (if effective)

TalkPlus What We Do
- stress, anxiety, low mood and worry, as well as
- support for managing a long-term health condition

For Anxiety and Depression
Helping people by giving them the tools to deal with the stresses of everyday life.

a £4m contract for the service that maximised its clientele, excluded the severely affected and allowed its clients to be politically excoriated as snowflakes for jacking up the Budget as if unable to cope with everyday stress, was it Mr Sunak said that, who was it led the complaint about so many young people not coping properly - they used to be called Drop-Outs not Snowflakes a.k.a Covidic-Distress, can still have it 3 ways

Long Term Conditions are included with the minor perturbances of life, major mental illness won't get a look in since its budget was diverted to scale up the Talking Therapy (the psychiatrists got quite upset about that, the police take up the slack but were not consulted)

Support in Long Term Conditions used to be advertised as a district nursing service except no-one paid the service for it so it never happened except on paper

I am bamboozled by the muddle of social prescribing by NHS to get a de-activated workforce on its feet, nursing prescribed by SS (personal care IS nursing), and behavioural modifications prescribed by DWP sanction - but heh in some Nordic country we can have a LightningProcess bolt-on for the Return to Work ... hey ho ... hey ho ... its off..to work..we go

 

[Suffolkres]

QUALITY CONTROL > DON'T BE A TOSSER > LITTER BUG


tornandfrayed cited UK White Paper


UK White Papers NHS & Cochrane to defy DWP


Since the DWP got quality control on its outsourced tenders ?

UK White Paper is convinced by extensive studies (see a Cochrane literary review maybe) that psychotherapy delivers a Return to Work program on the NHS so scale it up and all the upset people can Return to Health and Work (the budget was snaffled from the psychiatric hospitals & DWP last year)

Major mental illness won't get a look in (the psychiatrists got very upset). Police took up the slack but were not consulted. DWP went very quiet. Their secretary was struck dumb on reception. What a croc.

After 3 to 7yrs : psychotherapy increased employment by 1.4 to 1.5%, maybe, sorry probably, no figures available for sure, but probably the world can expect this world class program to find work for 14 happy confident people in every 1000, in Frimley alone this cost £4m mind you it also got spent on psychotherapy to support in Long Term Conditions, and the work found had to pay more than £0 a month, which resulted in wages of, on average, £17 a month, probably. Straight up, i am not kidding, ask Boris, those were the outcomes

The networked EXECUTIVE connectivity problem (intranet and internet) is that - happily - the DWP set stringent quality controls upon the grants doled out to peeps who tender for the Return to Work programs, it requires evidence of efficacy (outcomes)

So as I see it, the NHS stepped in to fill this quality-controlled gap, but with less basis and called it a Return to Health program instead, already, its a great cashcow as it implies a Return to Work that will balance the books (in my opinion its also very aryanically sanitising, Boy Scouts don't make that grade). NHS tenders also fill the quality-controlled gap controlled by SS Social Service) eg Community Care

Maybe some wriggle-room remains as happens with Govt outsourcing, but the sloppiest sub-contractors do say they prefer NHS contracts to those fussy SS and DWP contracts.

Spoiler: Can the government govern the NHS when it wants to?

i am still given to understand that my government cannot govern the NHS to deliver for M.E / CFS, because the NHS is no longer governed by my government, it has a separated, impenetrable executive network, so the government cannot even broadly promise to deliver a health service, nor even mention healthcare on its front-page plan, let alone scale up healthcare, rather promise to better my life by inspiring leadership

And yet my government can govern the NHS to scale up an NHS-executed program to modify behaviour because it activates perturbed and disturbed people by tackling them psychically to obtain an aryan health of mind

This excludes uncommon mental disturbance, ending the hard-won provision of -psychotherapy for eg schizophrenia, reverting to the archaic veto on any such thing, presumably because it takes for ever, as does M.E / CFS

Are chronic services for chronic illness and disability being phased out under guise of that old fake-austerity chestnut, do any clinics even do long term monitoring by now, is the rheumatoid nurse defunct too? I see no austerity when govt can afford to pay sub-contractors to turn a profit, while farming out also the essential services most people can't afford, niche markets until subsidised on a national scale, but this psychotherapy knock-off also wants to expand into other territories

Might be worth checking this out ..Faculty of Occupational Health...?
Get Britain Working' White Paper
The Government’s ‘Get Britain Working’ White Paper has been published and comes as stark figures show almost one and a half million people are unemployed, over nine million people are inactive, a record 2.8 million people are out of work due to long-term sickness. Young people have also been left behind with one in eight young people not in education, employment or training, and nine million adults lack the essential skills they need to get on in work. Read more here.


NHS England Operating Framework

NHS England has published their new operating framework setting out “how we do things around here” – the ways of working that will enable NHSE to deliver their purpose.