Advice for my dad desperately needed. redundancy/jsa related

blondefeathers

Desperately seeking advice for my dad as he's never claimed any benefits before, and isn't very good on the internet.

He's about to be made redundant at 59, and obviously will receive a payout, but was wondering if he could claim jsa?. I thought as he owns his own home, will receive an army pension soom, and will have the redundancy payout the answer would be no, but a friend of his in a similar situation said he was able to claim jsa for either 26 ot 52 weeks, before they basically did a needs test, in order to help him find work et c. My dad does want to find a new job asap so this would be great, as he could do with the job centers help, but im a bit dubious about him being able to claim jsa due to his income. Please help.

blondefeathers

If he can't claim jsa, could claim anything else to help tide him over while he finds work, save him eating into his payout he's worked so hard for. He joined the army at 16, then after long service joined the m.o.d, so is very nervous about finding a job on 'civi street' and maybe having to claim benefits, but if he is entitled to anything I think he should.

Upsidedown_Bear

There are 2 types of JSA, contribution based and income based.

This tells you more:

https://www.gov.uk/jobseekers-allowance/overview

He (or you) can do the benefits entitlement checker on here to see what he can claim.

http://www.turn2us.org.uk/benefits_search.aspx

zzzLazyDaisy

Assuming your Dad meets the NI contribution requirements, he is eligible to claim contributions based JSA. Contribution based JSA is not affected by most payments including redundancy and severance payments.

However, if he gets a pension JSA(C) is reduced by any amount over £50 a week. It may still be worth him signing on for JSA to get his NIC credit, but it is worth getting a pensions forecast as he may already have sufficient NI contributions for a full pension (bearing in mind this is shortly to increase to 35yrs).

ElizabethJH

Can claim contributions based JSA for 6 months (presume as always been in work there would be no problem with having the NI contribution) before going onto income based.

You can claim this and have savings so any redundancy payment/property he owns etc won't be taken into consideration so long as he has no other income.

Finger crossed that the 6 months tides him over and he finds a job within this period.

zzzLazyDaisy

ElizabethJH wrote: »

Can claim contributions based JSA for 6 months (presume as always been in work there would be no problem with having the NI contribution) before going onto income based.

You can claim this and have savings so any redundancy payment/property he owns etc won't be taken into consideration so long as he has no other income.

Finger crossed that the 6 months tides him over and he finds a job within this period.

OP says that her Dad is about to start getting his army pension, which will be accounted for £ for £ after the first £50 is disregarded.