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New Enterprise Allowance scheme - My story

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  • Hi , there everybody , I've had a good look through this topic , have seen some horror stories and some motivating stories too !


    I'm waiting for my 1st NEA appointment on the 29th April (booked 3 weeks ago!) and have luckily been able to get quite a bit of preliminary work thanks to my local Co-op and local Business Innovation Centre .


    They have been immensely helpful insofar as business plan , marketing , networking etc. (and hopefully a grant) but are rather at a loss when it comes to the benefits situation .


    Firstly I will not be applying for a loan , I have about half of the money I need (the other half is where the grant , or a loan from a family member comes in) . So the money is in place to upgrade and renew my equipment .


    My worry (with 4 kids) is the initial few months being worse off than we are now . My BIC advisor tells me I would be entitled to the NEA if my plans pass , meaning I would be entitled to the 13 weeks @£65 and 13 weeks @£33 .
    She also tells me that my wife would then be able to sign on as a jobseeker and receive JSA , meaning that for the initial 13 weeks we'd have almost the same income as on JSA .
    Does anyone know if this is true ?
    Thanks in advance .
  • khany
    khany Posts: 9 Forumite
    Hi guys I hope you can help me here! I have sent my business plan off to get it assessed how long will this take to get back and the process of applying for the loan? Im totaly fedup now! Jc advisors havnt a clue! My advisor is learning from me about what goes on with the mentor etc! Ive got my website ready and my flyers! I have applied for £1900 I just wana get it over and done with! I just want advise on the business plan assessment and the loan timeing thanks!
  • coffinpilot, until you start making a profit from your business. You should get full Housing benefit, Child Tax credits and Family allowance. You should also get Working Tax credits. Working Tax credits should pick up most of the difference between running your on business or being on JSA,

    I was told something similar to you about my partner being able to receive JSA. However, it seems that this is based on Income Tax credits over the past two years. In other words. If you or your partner have been claiming JSA for a while. Your partner is unlikely to get JSA.

    However, I think you will find that Working Tax credits will pick up most of the difference between being on JSA and running your own business.

    In my case. I have a partner and 2 young children. We are better off while im getting the NEA payments. Once the NEA payments finish after 26 weeks. We will be about £20 down when compared with being on JSA. Not a lot of profit needed from my business to be at the same level of income as I was from JSA and the other benefits. As I earn more profit from my business. I will lose Housing benefit. Working Tax credits will be lowered but only once earning significant money from my business. Either way, I will be much better off than being on JSA. Im sure it will be similar for you, coffinpilot.

    Two-three weeks for the loan to be sorted out, khany. If your business plan does not need amendments. Then, it should be passed within a week. Just needs your NEA provider to go through it and either say its passed or it needs amendments.
  • khany
    khany Posts: 9 Forumite
    @trueblue1965 thankyou very much I really apprecaite this. I just received an email from the nea saying that they have received my business plan and will be intouch with me shortly! My nea mentor is the regional director for the nea he is really good and im happy with his mentoring I really hope I get this grant as most of my travel business is up and ready! Any further advise wud be appreciated!
  • D4VE
    D4VE Posts: 20 Forumite
    Ninth Anniversary 10 Posts Combo Breaker
    khany,

    If you read back on some of my messages, you may get an idea on timescales - it has taken a lot longer than expected, but most of that is due to people not doing their job(s) properly (i.e. not being there for appointments, not sending docs off)

    You said you sent off your Business Plan. I had a meeting and my Mentor went through my BP, asked questions, queried my figures, and then once I told them I was right and they were wrong (lol), agreed my BP.

    A quick summary to give you times :
    18/3 - BP etc. emailed to NEA.
    21/3 - Told to amend my BP from Ltd Co. to sole trader.
    25/3 - Told to send over Cashflow in their format.
    26/3 - Received email to say Loan app had been successful & received documents in post a couple of days later.

    I will be returning my loan application tomorrow (11/4) and signing off JSA on Monday (14/4), so will keep you and others updated on how long this takes etc.
  • ggg1
    ggg1 Posts: 5 Forumite
    Hello everyone,

    First, thanks for all the good posts in this topic. Read a good bit of it over the last week or so and found people's experiences both interesting and useful.
    I'm in the process of starting my NEA adventure, so I'll try to join in the discussion and share my experience.
    I've first heard about NEA in the beginning of March. I'm unemployed, but wasn't on JSA or any other benefits. I've had ideas of starting self-employed business for a while, but it all came together only when a friend told me about NEA. My business can get started only if I get equipment costing over £2000, so money was one of the main obstacle and NEA can help me with it. I already have one business customer that agreed to use my services once I start, so I'm quite keen to get going as soon as I can. That customer, I think, would bring me about £50-70pw, so, although not much, but together with NEA £65 allowance, would make it a good start and still leave me with a lot of time to look for other customers.
    So once I heard about this opportunity I went straight for it. You need to be on JSA to get to NEA programme so first thing was to sign on. I've made a claim online on 3/3 and got my first appointment at jobcentre in about a week. From first meeting with my advisor I told her that I want to get to NEA and gave all the reasons for it - there's not many employment opportunities in the field I'd like to work and am good at, most of the companies in this business employ people as self-employed anyway, what often can mean working below NMW, so I prefer to be truly self-employed, so at least I know that if I'm not earning money I can try to do something about it. Advisor then told me that I need to pass something called habitual residency test, before I can start getting JSA and become eligible for the programme. That took another week to sort out and for my next sign on I went with a prepared printed document detailing all the reasons why I want to get to NEA and what have I done so far towards my business. Unfortunately, my advisor wasn't there and another advisor said that she's can't refer me to the programme. Not wanting to wait another two weeks, I then asked her to arrange appointment with my advisor and managed to get it the next day. Next day my advisor tells me that they've recently changed the rules and in order to get to NEA you need to first go to a seminar about it and so she booked me for the seminar. Another two weeks of waiting and yesterday (10/4) I finally attended the seminar. The mentor from Ixion first talked a bit about having a business in general and then presented the programme. After the seminar which took about one hour he asked people who are interested in the programme and have ideas to stay behind and had a short one on one chat with each, where I gave him the document with brief outline of my idea. He said something, like 'oh, interesting, very good', although, unless he has some special skills, I'm pretty sure he didn't read even half of it in those 10-15s he looked, gave me some forms to sign that I agree to DWP sharing my data with Ixion and said he's going to call me next week. That's step in good direction, because up till yesterday none of the advisors I spoke with at jobcentre wanted to read or listen about my idea and were only interested that I do my 35hours of jobsearching for ANY available work and that I make my CV publicly available on Universal Jobmatch (show me one employer that is going through thousands of public CV's on UJ trying to find employees. Don't think that that business would be very successful because there won't be much time left for anything else. On the other hand it helps companies to collect a lot of personal data, it's what UJ is all about, isn't it?)
    Anyway, there I am now, waiting for a call from my mentor to get things started. Luckily, my friend went through NEA with the same provider couple months ago so I've got all the templates of the business plan and can start working on it. Since I could start my business tomorrow if only I had equipment and am a bit afraid of losing that one customer if things take too long, I'll try to be as fast as I can. I want to be prepared and whenever my mentor calls me next week, send him/her first draft of my business plan straight away. We'll see how that goes...
  • Good Luck ggg1!

    I was in a similar position where I had a potential client lined up waiting for me to start, so I had my business plan drafted by my first meeting with my mentor. I was given lots of pointers to improve it, and was asked to do a projected cash flow as well - do you have a template for a cash flow already? If not, send me a pm with your email address and I will forward on the one that my mentor gave me.

    Once I had done the cash flow, and ironed out the bits that my mentor had advised on, it all went through fairly quickly (although I never heard much from my mentor again..!) :)
  • ggg1
    ggg1 Posts: 5 Forumite
    Thanks pinkypoopydoo,

    I had templates of business plan, cashflow forecast and personal survival budget. Spent the weekend in front of the screen and first draft is ready. Now just need to wait for a call from my mentor, get his/her email and wait for comments...
  • Andy2013
    Andy2013 Posts: 211 Forumite
    ggg1 , sounds like the process has changed as when I applied for NEA back in 2012 I was told my application would be fine as I had been on JSA for over 12 months, your lucky to go straight onto JSA to then jump to NEA , clearly they are being more helpful now.

    Good luck with your plans, remember only you can make this work , don't rely on NEA to much as I can assure you at some time they WILL let you down but just push through and keep focused on your goal, its great when it all comes together. :beer:
  • Hi folks. decided to get on the nea scheme after reading this thread.
    I'm planning to run a mobile stop me and buy one hot dog business.
    ive been on ESA for sometime now due to mental health issues, am finally feeling able to cope with a work situation as long as its for myself. as I will only be able to work when well enough I couldn't hold down 9-5 job.
    I started the ball rolling a couple of weeks ago and had my first appointment with my mentor on 9/4/14 it was a very productive meeting until I received the email and attached documents.
    Due to my lack of computer skills and or not having the correct program I couldn't even open the business plan document, let alone fill it out.
    So I moved on to the cash flow chart, which hasn't helped my mental state at all, as it may aswell have been written in Chinese cause it really was like a foreign language to me.
    I emailed my business mentor to tell him that it was all way beyond my capabilities and that I want to sell hot dogs not become a rocket scientist.
    Luckily it would seem I have a very good business mentor, because he replied and said he would do the business plan and cash flow chart for me from the figures I had written down. I should receive these back via email tomorrow.
    So today I found the site for the loan application and started to fill it out. went to the job centre got my documents certified, had one set as a paper copy and one set emailed to me so I could upload to my application, which I managed to do.
    The next stage is uploading my business plan, cash flow forecast and personal budgeting form (which I have no clue about as not seen any form about this) so hope my mentor sends it with the other to documents.
    My next nightmare is sorting a business bank account to put the loan into as I have been turned down by everyone due to extremely poor credit rating which started while I was out of work with my mental health issues. And yes I have tried everywhere and have been turned down for the NatWest foundation account as well as other basic no credit bank accounts. So I'm left with only one option it would seem and that is the online cashplus business account, which I have applied for today and posted my certified documents (paper copies mentioned earlier) to the free post po box given.
    If I'm not accepted for this account that's it game over before I even sell a hot dog.


    All in all I have found getting to this stage very stressful and complicated, I'm already struggling with the loan application because quite frankly I'm not clever enough and due to my mental state.
    In my opinion the whole process needs to be a lot more simple to help and encourage people off benefits. I will say though that the person helping me at the job centre has been superb and so has the business mentor, because I would have fallen at the first hurdle without these kind people.
    I will post again as or if I get further into my loan application. Sorry for the long post.


    ATB Chopper
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