My work colleague and Rent

binnie

Hello, today my work colleague was very upset as she is moving to a new rented house as the other one she is in is dropping apart and the landlord is useless.
Trouble is the rent is £100 a week and she is a single parent of one girl aged about 6 years old.
She works 25 hours a week and gets £5.77 an hour.
The benefit people will only give her £17 a week towards her rent so she has the rest to find.

Obviously she can't afford it as she doesn't get any maintainenace off the childs father.
But if she dropped down to 16 hours a week, then she will get about £65 a week towards the rent.

How can that be, and that doesn't encourage people to work does it? She is worse off the more hours she works.

Has she been given wrong information do you think.

xx

Gemmzie

When you say "the benefit people" - do you mean LHA?

She should be getting Child Tax Credits too, and childcare provision if she has it.

dmg24

From the information given, she is not worse off for working more hours.

She would probably be better to increase her hours to thirty, when she would get an additional premium on her WTC.

binnie

Thanks both of you. I don't understand it all as I don't have children and am working and married. But I just wanted to help her as she feels all confused.

:beer: