Claiming
Advice
Introduction
If you cannot earn a regular income due to a disease or accident caused at work. Then you could be entitled to Reduced Earnings Allowance (REA) and also potentially Industrial Injuries Disablement Benefit (IIB).
Eligibility
You must have an illness or disability caused by a work-related incident or disease that happened before 1st October 1990. Additionally, you must also meet the following:
- Your level of disability is assessed to be at least 1%;
- You cannot return to your regular occupation; and
- You cannot do other work with the same level of earnings as Your regular occupation.
If your circumstances change. For example, you stop work or change of occupation or earnings. You should notify the Barnsley Industrial Injuries Disablement Benefit Centre on 0800 121 8379.
Living abroad
If you live abroad permanently, you may not be able to claim REA, however, if you are temporarily visiting countries outside the European Economic Area, you can typically claim for the first three months of your stay.
How to Claim
You need to fill in and post a claim form from the Barnsley Industrial Injuries Disablement Benefit centre as mentioned earlier. You will need to prove your identity when making a claim and answer questions about your circumstances and background. Alternatively, you can download the Reduced Earnings Allowance claim form here.
How we can help
Lestons would be delighted to represent you at any stage, we are happy to arrange a specialist to help you complete the form and, if required we can arrange a video call with you to complete the report. To gain our assistance you need to open a case, this is done by simply clicking on the link at the top of the page, you will then need to deposit a sum equal to one hour’s usage, we appreciate that finding these funds may be difficult but we do try to keep our costs as low as possible. Our specialist would also, as a matter of course check to see if there are any other benefits available to you.
Upon receipt of these funds, you will be assigned your personal caseworker who will telephone you to discuss the matter and make suggestions on how to proceed. Please note your caseworker can only give generic advice, their role is to prepare your details for handling by our benefits advisor and to act as your point of contact, they will also issue you with your Password and PIN, these will be needed to log onto your client dashboard. From your dashboard you will be able to manage and view every aspect of your case, upload documents, images, files etc. If your application is unsuccessful then you can instruct us to contact the DWP for clarification with the aim to get you some benefit.