Paul Lewis on carer’s allowance
Who cares for the carers? The process of gaining carer’s allowance (and then keeping it) can be difficult to navigate, but it’s definitely still a benefit worth claiming.
Who cares for the carers? The process of gaining carer’s allowance (and then keeping it) can be difficult to navigate, but it’s definitely still a benefit worth claiming.
Unpaid carers save the government an estimated £184 billion a year. The charity Carers UK says that would be the cost if the state paid for the work carried out by nearly six million people who care for those who cannot completely look after themselves.
Unpaid carers can be partners, relatives, friends, or neighbours. Most are women but four out of ten are men and some children care for parents or older relatives.
People aged at least 16 who care for another person for at least 35 hours a week may be able to claim carer’s allowance (carer support payment in Scotland). The person they care for must claim a long-term disability benefit such as attendance allowance or personal independence payment or their Scottish equivalents.
Carer’s allowance is currently £83.30 a week and carer support payment in Scotland is the same weekly amount but comes with two extra payments every six months of £293.50.
For 35 hours work, the weekly benefit works out at £2.38 an hour and most carers spend a lot longer than that looking after their relative or friend. The national living wage is currently £12.21 an hour – at least five times as much per hour as a carer is given.
Despite its meanness, carer’s allowance comes with two tough rules. First, once the carer reaches state pension age it normally stops. That is because carer’s allowance and the state pension are what are called "overlapping benefits" which means they cannot both be paid at the same time. Normally you get whichever is the higher.
So even if you continue caring for someone after pension age you will just get the state pension – the same amount you would get if you were not a carer. This rule seems terribly harsh to the thousands of people every year who discover that even the small recognition they got as carers is taken away once they reach 66.
Jim, who has cared for both his wife and their son after birth difficulties 21 years ago, wrote to me to say: "When I retire I will have been an unpaid carer for about 40-45 years, all that time impoverished. It feels like a massive final insult to not even be recognised when I’m supposed to retire."
However, that rule should not put off older people from claiming carer’s allowance. Even if they get no extra money, they will have an underlying entitlement to carer’s allowance, which means they can get extra help with paying council tax or rent and they are entitled to a higher amount of means-tested pension credit – being a carer adds £46.40 a week to it.
There is no restriction on carer’s allowance on top of a private or company pension.
The other tough rule is that if you boost your carer’s allowance by doing paid work, there is a limit on what you can earn. If your take-home pay is above £196 a week then you lose entitlement to carer’s allowance. Not just for that week but permanently until you claim it again.
Even a penny over the limit could stop your benefit. The rules allow you to deduct any tax you pay on your wages and also half of any pension contributions you make, though most carers will not be helped by these rules as their earnings are too low.
Another rule allows wages to be averaged over at least five weeks. But this rule is so complicated even the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has admitted it issued faulty guidance both to carers and its own staff and wrongly stopped benefits for thousands of carers.
In the past the DWP failed to stop carer’s allowance for months if not years when a carer overshot the earnings limit, because it failed to use data about carers’ earnings from HM Revenue & Customs. This left carers with benefits they should not have had and owing thousands of pounds. The DWP says this has now been resolved and the historic debts are being reviewed.
The earnings limit was raised in April 2025 to cover 16 hours at the National Living Wage of £12.21 an hour and is due to be pegged to the National Living Wage. When that rises to £12.71 an hour in April, the earnings threshold becomes £204 a week.
However, the other tough rules remain – go a penny over the limit and all of your carer’s allowance is disallowed and you will not get it in future unless you claim again.
Many carers have told me they are afraid to do that in case they break the rules again and have to repay the benefit. The DWP is reviewing it all but warns changes will take time to implement.
All unpaid carers should get practical help from their local authority. Carers are entitled to a carer’s assessment (adult carer support plan in Scotland and a carer’s needs assessment in Wales). Contact social services for information.
This assessment should establish the help and support you need and can aid you or the person you care for to claim financial help. It can provide aid with household tasks and should offer respite care at least once a year.
It can also give health advice or classes to improve your wellbeing. If you can, do some paid work – it provides not just extra money but an important break from just being alone with the person you care for all day every day. You may have to fight for these rights as councils are very short of cash.
Hero image credit: Eliot Wyatt
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