Can anyone advise me please?

dette48

Hi,

I do not know if I am in the correct place on the site to ask for help on this subject, but I an sure somebody can direct me to where I should be.

I am completely confused and stressed because I can't seem to get an answer to my problem.
My husband lost his job at the end of May and he is claiming JSA, we were told that after 13 weeks we would be able to claim for help with our mortgage interest.
We did this (apparantly the 13 weeks was up on the 4th september).
After completing numerous forms and telephone calls regarding our mortgage we were told it would be backdated to the 4th september. We were told we could only receive help on the original mortgage, which i had took out before I even met my husband, in my name only.
I remorgatged some years later after I had met and married my husband, we did this to do a few home improvements and add my husbands details/name to the mortgage. also to pay off a few debts that my husband had.
The problem is that we have only just received a letter this week telling us that the payments to the mortgage company will be taken from my husbands JSA. An amount of aprox £27 per week. That same day my husband only received £60 JSA for that two week period. We had not been told this in advance, my husband rang them and told them that we did not understand the letter that they had now sent us, it did not really tell us anything. He told the adviser that we thought that the help with the mortgage interest payments were in addition to his JSA. He was told that he would get the extra in the next few days. We then received aletter from our mortgage company telling us that they were going to receive a payment from DWP for £108 every four weeks, no mention of the backdated amount. When my husband contacted DWP about this, he was told that, that was correct. they would be only paying aprox £6 per week now.....
Can anybody please explain this to me or tell me if this is correct, because to me it sounds wrong.
Why wait 13 weeks if you are paying it yourself anyway from youe JSA??
Please help.:(

salau2

Support for Mortgage Interest is separate from your personal JSA allowance. Currently the amount of support is 3.63% of the applicable mortgage amount. If you disagree with the mortgage amount being considered you can appeal (one month to appeal decisions). Do you have receipts for the Home Improvements? and were the improvements essential?

You can get SMI for up to 2 years on JSA.

HappyMJ

They do it in an awkward way by increasing your JSA by £54 a fortnight in your case then taking it from the JSA to make the mortage repayment. You should still get the same JSA amount though.

dette48

Thank you very much for your replies.
It will be just a case of seeing if anyone that work's for the DWP understands!!!:doh:

dette48

Hello again,

Regarding my above query, We are still having problems with our help, they told us we had an amount of over £200 to be paid backdated to our mortgage co, now they have said we will not receive this because of an increase in our income! (there has been no increase whatsoever).
We just cannot get a straight answer from this department and they still insist that any payments they make will be deducted from my husbands JSA.
Even our mortgage company do not have a clue what is going on. I am in a really bad state now I feel like w are just hitting our heads against a brick wall.
Both my husband and I have worked all our lifes and now when we need help we are getting nothing. I have been completely worn down with having to fight and struggle for help, i've given up on everything and really do not know where to turn next.:mad:

bored_at_home

they will take it from his jsa yes, but his jsa amount on paper will be more than it was before you qualified.

just say his jsa is 67.50 a week, then he would get 135 pouns paid in bank every 2 weeks.
now if they are saying they will pay 6pounds per week mortgage interest his jsa on paper will now bi 135 pounds plus 12 pounds housing allowance per fortnight, but the amount he will recieve will STILL be 135 pounds.

when they first work it out they short you and overpay you , it seems to be a common thing and it can take weeks b4 they get it right.