Having problems backdating Universal Credit elements?

2 mins read

Tuesday 17 September 2024

Tags: universal credit, template letters, disabled child addition, carer element, backdating, extra credits

Families on Universal Credit who have a disabled child usually qualify for extra payments.

You should get an extra Universal Credit payment – a disabled child addition – for each child in your family who receives a qualifying disability benefit. Qualifying benefits include Disability Living Allowance (DLA), Personal Independence Payment (PIP) or their Scottish equivalents. Depending on your circumstances, you may also qualify for an extra payment as a carer: the carer element.

Read more about these extra credits.

Sometimes there can be a delay in the Universal Credit service finding out that you are eligible for a disabled child addition or carer element. This means there’ll be a period in which you get Universal Credit, but your award is missing the additional elements. The law says that the extra payments can in most cases be backdated, i.e. paid from an earlier date.

But sometimes the Universal Credit service refuses to backdate to the correct date. This is an issue we know affects many families.

Use our new template letters to get your elements backdated

To help, we have developed a number of template letters.

You can use these to ask the Universal Credit service to revise their decision not to backdate the disabled child addition or the carer element.

Note! These template letters are for use in certain circumstances only. For that reason, we recommend that you first read our page about backdating of the disabled child addition and carer element of Universal Credit.

You’ll find a link to the template letters from there.

We’d love to hear your feedback

If you use our template letters, we’ve like to know how you get on. This really helps us measure the impact of our work.

Please share your feedback by emailing [email protected]