Income support timing & more!

charlie35

Hi all

I finished work due to unfortunate circumstances 3 weeks ago. A week ago I contacted Tax credits & told them I was no longer working, they updated their system & told me I had a 4 week run on for my childcare & working TC's & so I had 2 weeks left.

I am a lone parent to a 1 year old & 10 year old.

I applied for Income support & Housing Benefit on the same day. (HB was online)

Income support told me I wouldn't be required to attend an interview for a few weeks & they sent the paperwork straight away & I received it the very next day. I was required to send back proof of the maintenance my sons father pays me & also a profit & loss sheet for my last years figures as I was self employed. I did this straight away.

Then yesterday I got a call from housing benefit asking if they can ask a few questions. I answered them all, but her big issue was that she had looked up Tax credits & their system still said I was receiving Working tax credits, I informed her that I has updated them when I stopped work & I could only think that their system hadn't processed my changes yet.
She told me that she was awarding me a 13 week discretionary payment as my rent is higher than HB but she needed to know my IS claim has been approved first & to tell them as soon as it was as IS overruled tax credits. She sounded doubtful that I would receive IS though, which worried me.

Sorry for waffling on, but, how does it work with IS? Will they look at TC's & see it says working & say no straight away or will they be able to see that I told them I wasn't working any more & understand its being changed?

I'm worried now, because HB seems to hang on IS's decision, but I know I have no income & am a lone parent.

I called IS but their system hadn't even received my returned forms at that point. How long do they take?

Oh & lastly, will my 13 weeks dis payment from HB start after proving, or am I losing weeks already?

Thanks if you've got this far! :-)

stiltwalker

Hi there - When my hubby stopped work to be a full time carer for our son (I was already carer for our daughter) we applied for IS with him as main person (as DD's DLA was coming up for renewal so didn't want to take chances) - he had working tax credits run on for 4 weeks as you have but they just deducted this amount from the IS before it was paid for those 4 weeks. We had taken all our documents in though as ours is complicated by having direct payments for respite. Even though IS is supposed to be a passporting benefit for HB purposes we still got a review form from HB after IS was granted wanting all our info so had to take everything in there and explain it all (again complicated by direct payments account plus some other bits).


It was all sorted pretty easily though - hope yours goes ok too.

charlie35

Thanks for your reply.

HB wrote to me asking for a list of documents but when the lady phoned me she said they weren't necessary just yet & I would get my first payment on Tuesday (my self employed income was very low last tax year as I was on maternity leave for 40 weeks of it) - so i'm guessing its because tax credits confirmed my low income? But she said I wouldn't get my discretionary amount until i'd proven IS & it wouldn't be back dated & after the time runs out if I hadn't proved it I would get £15 per week, i'm very confused! :-)