Job Seeker Allowance predicament

everettm1

Hi there I have just graduated from university and currently living with my girlfriend, who is still a full time student, in a privately rented one bedroom flat. I am currently looking for work, but due to lack of jobs and coming up to Christmas I filed a claim for jobseekers allowance at the beginning of September. I was advised to apply for a joint claim with my girlfriend as we are cohabiting, and thus she had to apply for an exemption as she is not applicable due to her studying. Nearly two months on, missing paperwork and dealing with uncaring, uninformed staff we finally received a response to inform us that we were not eligible for any allowance. We followed this up by calling the given 0845 number and were told by a particularly rude advisor this was due to the fact that my girlfriend’s student loan covered the government’s advised living allowance of £111.45 per week. I myself am in receipt of housing benefit, but my girlfriend doesn’t receive any other money, and her loan barely covers her share of rent and bills each term.
All things considered, could anybody help by answering a few questions I have:
Is this a valid reason for denying my application? Is there any point in disputing the denial?
Was a joint claim even the right claim for us to begin with?
Is there any other financial help that we could be eligible for?
What is the legal standing if I now changed my claim to a single claim despite us continuing to live together?
Other information which may be helpful is that we are both 22,have little to no savings and while we have both worked previously we have not saved up enough national insurance to be in receipt of the class 1 national insurance contribution allowance.

Any help or advice would be really appreciated as we are stuck with how to proceed.

miduck

The "valid reason" is that your household income is higher than the applicable amount. There is no point in appealing this.

If you changed to a single claim whilst still living with your gf you would be committing fraud.

You will be entitled to the single person discount on your council tax, as your gf is a student.

You need to advise HB that you are a couple. If you are claiming as a single person your claim is fraudulent.