Housing benefit questions

elljay

Early next year I will be losing several hours work which will bring me down to around 9 hours a week, though this can go up or down by a few hours - max 4 either way. I've done the entitledto check and it seems I will be entitled to housing/ council tax benefit. I find it strange though that unlike job seekers, they wouldn't care whether I'm trying to get more hours work or a better paid job. Have I got that right? I would've thought they should be encouraging me to get more work to get off the benefit. The other thing is that as my pay will vary depending on whether I get offered extra hours or lose some each month, do you have to do monthly 'returns' so they know how much to give you each month? Do they check your bank statement too as I have a regular payment coming in each month which is a repayment on some money I lent to my daughter - would they count that as income? I also get some expenses from my job - do they count that as income too?

I'll give hem a ring on Frid to check my entitlement but sometimes you need a certain amount of information to ask the right questions. Thanks

real1314

1. Hb are not there to encourage you to work more/less hours. It's not part of their role.

2. They can average your wages, then they can adjust things if you earn too much/too little. Best thing is to send them a copy (they may ask for original) of each payslip.

3. They might look at bank statements.

4. You'll need to provide evidence of the payments from your daughter.

5. Some expenses can be disregarded - you'll need to provide details of what the expenses are for.

elljay

real1314 wrote: »

1. Hb are not there to encourage you to work more/less hours. It's not part of their role.

2. They can average your wages, then they can adjust things if you earn too much/too little. Best thing is to send them a copy (they may ask for original) of each payslip.

3. They might look at bank statements.

4. You'll need to provide evidence of the payments from your daughter.

5. Some expenses can be disregarded - you'll need to provide details of what the expenses are for.

Thank you. All my questions answered in one reply - brilliant. I think my statement gives my daughters name against her payment so that should be ok. The expenses are mileage for my car for work related journeys, that's all. I've just remembered, I also get mileage for a voluntary job that I do, it's at local government rates - do these payments count as income when assessing the benefit or is it just paying me back for what I have to spend anyway in order to do the work?

Thanks again

Macro_3

If the mileage for your voluntary work is just reimbursement of expenses then it will be disregarded - but you will need to provide proof that that's what it is.

Work mileage would be disregarded so long as the expense is wholly incurred by doing your job. So for example, if you were a home carer driving between customer's homes throughout the day, the mileage reimbursement would be disregarded. If you got mileage as part of a company car package which included driving to your place of work or for leisure/domestic reasons, that would not be.