Self employed - sick pay?

Nightowl

Hi,

My husband is self employed - in reality he earns a couple of hundred quid a month if I'm lucky. Back in October work really dried up and he decided to get a 'proper job'. We went to the job centre and were told he'd get around £70 a week whilst actively looking for work, we were thrilled. He made applications and brought evidence to the job centre for about 6 weeks, but no money appeared. Eventually we were told he was not entitled as he'd been self employed and not made enough National Insurance contributions.
To cut a long story short he stopped going to the job centre and remained self employed and has earned about £500 this year in total (partly due to unexplained ill health, see below!).

He's been unwell the last couple of months and two weeks ago got admitted to hospital with an inflamed gallbladder and stones. He stayed in a week and will have an op in another 4 weeks, then shouldn't do heavy lifting for another 6 weeks.

We don't get any benefit other that tax credits as I earn around £25,000 as a nurse(including shift allowance and overtime). Is he entitled to anything. I feel like a single mother with the added expense of another adult. Help? We have two children 12 and 14.

Thanks

Caz3121

Whilst contribution based JSA looks at NI class 1 contributions (paid by an employee) contribution based ESA would also look at NI class 2 contributions as paid by self employed to ascertain if entitled.

Note the normal route appears to be.
Get doctors line
Claim ESA
receive assessment rate (assuming NI contributions are sufficient)
after 13 weeks get sent for a medical
fail medical and get told fit for work, ESA stops and told to claim JSA (which he obviously would not qualify for)

I guess the only postitive with his income being so low is that you are not losing a full time salary from the household so may be able to look at cutting back to plug the temporary gap

Nightowl

Thanks for that. I'm going to pay his outstanding class 2 contributions when I get paid and put the claim in then. Meanwhile I'm arranging a doctors note.
By the time the medical comes up he should be over op.
Thanks