housing benefit and resignation

makeitright

Hi, I am self-employed, on a low/middling income. I am not currently claiming benefits. However, I do not have anywhere proper to live (I have been staying in hostels, with friends, sometimes with nowhere to stay and virtually sleeping rough).

I am thinking of renting somewhere and claiming housing benefit/local housing allowance (I can get the funds together to pay the deposit and month's rent in advance, etc, despite having no savings.) Having looked in to this, I know that I would get about half the rent paid by the local housing allowance, due to the level of my self-employed income. However, I am also thinking of resigning from the work with my main, ongoing client, which would remove 75% of my income. This is because the work conditions have become untenable.

My question is not about my entitlement to a benefit like jobseeker's allowance, which is not what I am looking to claim. I would also be grateful if we can avoid questions about whether I 'have' to leave the client who is my major employer as, believe me, I have my reasons, and I am quite a morally oriented person. It is just that this would take the discussion in another direction, involving time to explain this aspect, and hopefully it is possible to keep the thread on track on the question I am actually seeking to get answered. I'd be very grateful!

So: assuming I leave this 'main client' (...forced out over a long period), my self-employed income will be 1/4 what it was, and I believe my LHA entitlement will be substantially higher. I will not need to claim JSA or income support or anything like that as my remaining self-employed income will be just above the entitlement threshold for that.

My questions are: 1) I believe the fact that I resign from my main client won't jeopardise being able to claim local housing allowance like this?; 2) Will the council check with my main client that I have resigned? This is important as I do not wish the client to know that I have begun to claim benefits; the reason is that I may be able to get other (declarable) work from them in the future (slightly better, different work) and do not wish to jeopardise this by being seen as someone claiming benefits. Do councils check/what are my rights on them checking?; and 3) importantly, will my housing benefit level be assessed on the basis of my *new* self-employed income level (much lower than it currently is) or will they do it on what it was earlier in this tax year? if they do it on the basis of the latter, then I would be paying a lot of rent which I just could not afford on the basis of my new income.

Are there any real experts on housing benefit on the MSE forum who could very kindly advise on these more subtle points?

Clearly, my longer term aim is to find a new client to replace the problem client, but in my field, I know this is going to take time. In the meantime, I cannot stand being semi-homeless and persecuted at work (over a long period etc...but don't mean to sound like a whinger...there are good and more complicated reasons for resigning than I have space for here though).

Many thanks in advance for any help you are able to provide!

Cheers,

gardenpath

As far as I am aware they would normally use the figures on your last tax return, but I would have thought that you can explain that circumstances have changed significantly and could they use other, more up to date figures. I claimed for a very small time some years ago when I was employed part time and worked self employed full time, but my self employed earnings were minimal (hence the part time job) but they were taken from the tax return. It would be worth trying and see what happens... they can only say no!