Savings and income support

cattie

Sarah, DWP usually have what they term a tarriff for expenditure of capital for allowable living expenses. This tends to pretty well mirror what a person would be receiving in income support should they have no capital; ie: if a person qualfied for £500 per month IS then this would be considered the amount at which your savings should reduce by each month.

It might be in your interest to take experienced welfare rights advice regarding the situation as they will be familiar with the situation you find yourself in & if they feel you can successfully appeal the DWP decision they will help you to do this.

Good luck.

sarahgo_2

victory Have you ever lost your home and everything you owned see how far you'd get on £15000 to replace everything for you and 3 children and then have to live off the rest for 8 months and pay debts which you were left in cos a ex partner. All we had were a few clothes thats it nowt else not even a tv, or should I have stayed and put up with domestic violence?

sarahgo_2

It was not just to furnish a home it was to replace my entire life and my kids lost everything they owned. Thanks for support but I did not spend that money just to get the savings down I spent it cos I needed to.

viktory

sarahgo wrote: »

victory Have you ever lost your home and everything you owned see how far you'd get on £15000 to replace everything for you and 3 children and then have to live off the rest for 8 months and pay debts which you were left in cos a ex partner. All we had were a few clothes thats it nowt else not even a tv, or should I have stayed and put up with domestic violence?

The domestic abuse is not the point here. The £15k you spent in an as yet undetermined period of time (8 months?) and your claim for income support is. And be honest, it was not all you had - you have already advised that you were/are in receipt of HB and CTB, so no rent or council tax to pay. Quite a saving right there.

Making sure you maintain a roof over your and your children's head is more important than replacing things.

sarahgo_2

So I can live in a home with nothing in it thanks a bloody lot happy christmas to you viktory to. I aint gonna bother again with this site

viktory

sarahgo wrote: »

So I can live in a home with nothing in it thanks a bloody lot happy christmas to you viktory to. I aint gonna bother again with this site

You had £15k which you have spent, I suspect in less than a year! How can your home have nothing in it if you have spent all that money - as previously posted by you on 'stuff'. That is considerably more than some people earn in a year - and have to pay rent and council tax. Stop being so self pitying and start looking to your own spending habits before blaming the world and his wife.

Incidentally we all start with nothing - many years ago I lived in a council flat, in a tower block on the 17th floor and was so poor I had second hard carpets!

bestpud

It's a shame you didn't seek advice on this before spending the money but now you have, your only option is to try and prove as far as is possible what you have spent.

Realistically, had you been on income support alone, you'd only have had an extra £34 a week as you have been receiving £30 from them anyway.

You say you have withdrawn quite a lot of cash on an ongoing basis (£150 a week! - that's a lot of food and uitilities for three people over the summer) and I guess they are looking at that and thinking it doesn't cost that much to live on. The debt repayments would only have been £25 a week roughly so you can hardly blame that.

The bills should be easily proved - you just need to contact the companies involved but tbh you know as well as we do you have been a bit free and easy with money this last year.

They allowed you £3k to furnish your house and you could have claimed with £3k left in the bank so why on earth you have spent the lot I don't know...

Plus you knew you'd already spent more than they allowed on household items when you started spending the last £7k so you surely didn't think they'd not make any checks?

As victory says, most of us start out with nothing - it's just the way it goes.

I think a trip to the CAB with all the paperwork you can muster may be your best bet.