Struggling

nilla

As I have posted before hubby lost his job on 31st Jan, we put a claim in for pension credits with him being over 60 but we still havent recieved the forms back for him to sign etc, we rang them and they are dealing with it but all we have to live on is my Carers allowance and tax credits. I rang tax credits and thought till pension credits come through which at this rate will be next year that our tax credits would go up as our income has dropped to £53 a week but they have stayed the same.
Are there any benefits we could claim meanwhile to put us on?
Thanks for reading

MCGONIS

Hi do you mean 31st December is when your partner became unemployed rather than 31st January?

I am assuming you do. There is nothing else you can claim in the meantime except a loan from the Social Security. The loan is to cover food and fuel until you get your payment of Pension Credit.

It does have to be paid back, obviously, but may help you out temporarily. Your Pension Credit helpline can tell you the free phone number to call to apply for the loan.

Pension Credit takes ages to be processed and finalised. Shocking and unfair on you.

That is why call centre workers from DWP are striking today and tomorrow. There is a total lack of service and advise from the DWP helplines now. The operators are under preasure to get you off the phone and take the next call. That means, fairly often, the advice you get is poor. You are just one of many calls that are taken by the agent and the DWP set a target that each call must be dealt with within so many minutes.

DWP tell parliamement they answer calls within a few minutes of waiting and provide a valuable service to "our most vulnerable customers". What parliament don't know is, the staff don't have any time to help people properly.

They answer the calls yes, but the caller is left having to call time and time again to get an answer.

Good luck and can you keep me posted.

nilla

Sorry yes I meant 31st December my head is all over the place right now, he got his birth certificate back yesterday from DWP with acompliment slip saying we will contact you in approx 6 weeks, its seems we will have to get a loan its all so worrying as never been in this position before

Oldernotwiser

Aren't you living at the moment on his December pay?

nilla

He came away without any pay at all, his last payday was 31st Dec and he got paid £200 weekly