Home visit to check HB?

fruitcake_2

Is it usual to have someone from HB visit you at home to discuss your claim? I've had one about 9 months ago. Received a letter saying they want top visit on the tuesday, but I am going to be away visiting my very poorly mum, so will have to rearrange. The last time someone came they wanted to know why I was paying my student loan off, and why I had little or no income from my self employment. Why did I have gym membership, how did I survive on very little, and they looked at my shopping receipts....which they were impressed by. I showed them all my paperwork, gave them permission to look at my bank account, was as helpful as I could be, but felt they were being really intrusive, when I was just being honest.....has anyone else had home visits regularly? Just wonderring how normal this is.

DaisyFlower

I think its good that they do these checks and its a condition of claiming.

From their point of view, if you are declaring little income yet paying student loans (which only have to be paid once salary is at a certain threashold) and gym membership then they may believe your income is not in proportion to that being declared.

PAYE figures are set by the employer and can be seen each month/week, S/E status can be subject to lots of factors and not always a true figure.

fruitcake_2

Thanks, I'm not sure why my student loan started coming out of my account as I had filled the defferment forms as they were sent to me, but I have been living a really frugal life.....MSE board helps a million! Looking at my financial situation I am entitled to defer student loan payments, but I gave up my gym membership along with my mobile phone monthly contract, as I would rather have that money pay my student loan off, the gym however was the only thing that kept me from going under, so instead i go for walks. I have sacrificed going without having children or a partner so that I can survive on every penny I recieve. The home visit isn't a problem, just wondered if they were common practice. I'm thinking of giving up self employment and have been applying for fulltime work, should I let the person know who visits or should I wait and see if I get a job first? Thanks for the info. When you are self employed you don't have certified acoounts unless you can afford to pay an accountant.....theres no point for me as I am not generating any income yet.

fluffymovie

HI there

As a method for deterring fraud and preventing error from entering the system, benefit reviews are required and tend to be 'risk based'. This means that people who are most likely to have a change are visited more often that someone else such as a pensioner.

If you are self employed, this may be why they are coming to see you and to be honest, 9 months between visits seems acceptable to me but then I suppose it depends on your views.

It does sound incorrect that they asked to see your shopping receipts however. That sort of information is usually only requested by an assessment officer and only if there is some concern about standard of living. It doesn't sound like that was the case with you so you might want to ask them why they ask for that should they ask you again.

uganda

The layman's answer to your question is

Yes, visiting HB claimants is very common. Each authority will have a dedicated visiting team, who do nothing but visits (well, they do reports of their visits back in the office, but you know what I mean). Visits are done for a variety of reasons - sometimes it's just random checking, sometimes some conflicting or unusual information may have been noticed and they want to clarify it (as in your case), sometimes they may blitz certain geographical areas or certain types of claimant (e.g. self-employed people?) and sometimes - quite a lot of the time in fact - they do 'hand-holding' visits for people for whom it is difficult to get to the benefit office (i.e. the elderly, the sick and the disabled). There was a time when it was normal to visit every single new applicant, and some authorities may still do this.