Student Income and Maternity Allowance, please help????

Jonesy1983

Hi I really hope someone can help me shed some light on this as i am totally confused!!

I recently round out i am pregnant and I am currently on the nursing diploma which is bursary funded. I qualify in september and my bursary stops in august. If I do or don't get a job I will have to claim maternity allowance either way instead of maternity pay. Now I have had the NHS bursary for the last 3 years does anyone know if this counts as your income when making a claim for maternity allowance?

so for example when they work out my mat allowance i will get 90% of what my bursary payments were or statuary mat pay approx£136 whichever is lower (which will be the SMP rate as my bursary was higher than that figure) or do i class as not having an income??

However..... another spanner in the works is as I have had a part time job while i was at university where i earn't £38 a week for 5 hours work... will my maternity allowance be based solely on 90% of this figure which would be approx £31 a week?? (which i think is a little bit ridiculous tbh how on earth i can survive and pay my bills plus provide for my current child plus a new baby on £31 a week i dont know!)

whilst at university I was not entitled to any housing benefit or tax credits, income support etc due to my bursary coupled with my partners wage we were deemed to be earning enough to support ourselves also i presume I still wont be entitled to any of those even if I am unemployed or on maternity leave as my partner earns 20k a year which the tax credits office state is the threshold to support the family

I have trawled the net looking for some kind of answer to this and had no such luck so anyone who can offer to point me in a better direction?? or has advice??

Many thanks

pmlindyloo

Your Maternity Allowance will be based on your work - nothing to do with your bursary. You are right that it will be 90% of your gross salary.

I am presuming that you got some advice about claiming tax credits when you started as a student because my understanding is that the actual bursary would not be counted as income. Therefore I would have to believe that you had other grants/loans.

OK, based on the figures that you have given and the fact that you already have a child then you may be eligible for tax credits when your student loans end. After your new baby is born (congrats, by the way) then you will need to inform tax credits about this.

Telephone tax credits and ask them about claiming tax credit for when you finish as a student and advise them about your expecting the new baby.

You may also find that when you finish uni. you might be eligible for HB and CT support so I would apply for these.