It would state it was an interview under caution. If the total ISA per name is less than £6,000 there will be nothing to worry about. If the amount if over £6,000 then I believe benefit is reduced by £1 per £250 (or part there of) over £6,000. So savings of £6,500 would reduce benefit by £2 per week. This would be back dated to the point it should have been disclosed. If the savings were not disclosed but have only recently hit the £6,000 plus threshold then the back dating would only go to when it became a problem. There is nothing to worry about with the compliance officer and they only take your details which are then passed onto a decision maker to look at and decide what happens. (if any of this is wrong I am sure I will be corrected)

Hi, Someone will correct me if I am wrong but I believe you are placed on contribution based benefit for 12 months and then switched over to income based. You will still get money after the 12 months providing you do not have a working partner (or at least not working or earning over the threshold) and that you have no additional monies coming in which are counted (DLA and housing etc are not counted and are disregarded). In your original post you asked about backdating, if there is an increase in benefit it will be backdated to the date the decision was made. I was moved from IB to ESA last year (only after appeal, but I was placed in support group when I was accepted on ESA. All money was backdated)

Hi all, this is my first post. I had a compliance officer visit today to look into my claim to see if I am living as part of a couple. I would like some advice on a few things. I claim ESA (transferred from longterm IB last January) income based and get DLA middle care and lower rate mobility with that being reviewed as I have gotten worse over the last year (it was awarded for 5 years in May last year). I do not live alone, I live with my carer and this has been since 2011. My carer gets income support for looking after me and obviously carers allowance. We both get separate housing benefit and council tax reduction. we are joint tennents. At no point in our time living in the same house have we mislead any agency by claiming to be living at other addresses etc. We started living together because I was unable to continue living alone (I suffer from Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and depression) as I was suicidal. My carer could no longer cope with her parents so she needed to move out. At the time there was talk of changing the housing rules to anyone under 35 only being entitled to a bedsit or shared house. We decided that better the devil you know and we moved in together (we had been friends for 7 years prior to the date we started living together. We had a similar check in September 2012, and were found to not be a couple. Bascially the compliance officer said it is up to a decision maker if we are a couple or not regardless of whether we are in fact a couple or not. He also said that we should have had a follow up check 13 weeks after the first and that if we are found to be a couple we would have had an over payment and the amount would be back dated to the date we should have been re assessed even though it is the DWP who did not arrange this. I want to know, would we be responsible for an overpayment where we have not mislead or given inaccurate or incomplete information and also if we were found to be a couple (which from what the compliance officer said is almost agiven) would that mean we would have to either move into separate houses or else move into a single bedroom property and share a room, which if we were a couple obviously wouldn't be a problem but as we are not it doesn't seem fair. I know all of this is what if at the moment but it has got me worried and as stated I suffer from depression and was hospitalised last January under section 4 of the mental health act due to being suicidal, its only just a year later and again the DWP is making me ill. Thank you for taking the time to read this and any help would be appreciated.

First off I know this is a consumer debt and not the place to be asking for help on Business debts but I dont know where else to try. The problem in a nutshell is that an electricity debt for a company owned by my mother is in my name. To make matters worse the debt isnt just for the area of the building that my mum was renting but for the whole building (4 floors, we rented just half of the ground floor and basement). When my mum first signed the lease I was helping her out sorting out things like the phone and electricity accounts. When the first bill came I contacted N-power on two points firtsly that it shouldnt have been in my name and secondly about the amount. It turned out that there was only one supply of electric coming into the propety even though all tennets had sub meters. We trusted the landlord when he told us that he would get the payments from each tennet and pay the bill. This was a mistake and he would only get the payments after we recieved visits from collection agents (for which we were charged on the bill but he did not pay). Also on top of that companies moved out and so we could not collect the ammounts ourselves or in the case of two of the bigger companies we were unable to get anywhere with their head office staff. Obviously transfering the debt back to my mum (which is something I asked for each time we contacted them and each time they said its done, but it wasnt) should be easy as we can send them a copy of the lease in her name as well as stock orders and business rate bills. The problem is that N-power simply state it is a 3rd party issue and they cant help us with the fact not all the debt is ours (again they were aware of this as soon as we figured it out). One other little problem is that due to the business making a loss of £49,000 my mother doesnt have the money to pay the debt and the stress is getting to her. So I am stuck between a rock and a hard place in that I dont want to add to my mothers already overwhelming debts but I dont have the money to pay the debt back (I am on benefits and spend most of my time in secured acomidation as I suffer from Bi-polar dissorder). Hopefully someone can advise me on what I can do. Thank you for taking the time to read this.