any housing benefit bods please?

skipsmum

hopefully just a quickie!
Is HB worked out weekly, or on a yearly average for self employed people? Eg if you earned £200 in wk 1, £25 in wk 2, £300 wk 3, nothing wk 4, would you get HB for weeks 2 and 4 only or would they take an average of all 4 weeks and work it out from there? I did ask them on the phone but I was trying to listen and write and my note doesn't make sense!
Thankyou xx

karenx

You will be written to every 2-3 months and asked for your profit and loss accounts to date and they will work it out from there. So you will have to submit these on a regular basis

fluffymovie

Self employed claims are harder to get right.

We have to use an appropriate assessment period. We usually look at your last 12 months earnings and can't chase every 2 - 3 months for s/e accounts as they are complicated to calculate.

Usually, as a new business, we would get you to estimate your weekly income for the first 13 weeks. At that point, we would contact you and ask for your actual 13 weeks income. We would use that for 13 weeks and then ask again for your first 26 weeks income and then use that for the next 26 weeks. This would bring us to 12 months at which time, we would get your annual accounts and use that going forward.

If your self employment has ceased however, we can choose a different period. By that I mean if your business is not doing well, then your last years accounts may not be representative and so we may choose to look at another assessment period,