Urgent help please.

mjcbright

I'm a single mother & I was working on approximately 30 hours per week, being a home care worker. This means I used my car to go from home to home and carry out my work, I also only get paid for the hours I work.

The company gives me a petrol allowance on top of my wages of £0.25 per mile to help with my fuel expenses, and when I send in my wage slip the benefits team seem to include this as earnt income and calculate it as my earnings. I am currently putting in about £40-50 worth a petrol a week into my car & only getting back roughly £50 back in expense.

The reason why I have to send a wage slip into the benefits team is because I'm on a zero hour contract & my wage fluctuate every month.

Ok now you have a bit of background.

After months of telling people in the benefits contact centre that their calculations must be wrong I have discovered that the have put roughly £82 extra as earnt income on my housing benefits claim and for months now I've been paying near enough full rent and financially struggling in the process. My council tax bill has also been maximum.

Now I have calculated my total income from the period I started work up until my current wage period (I work a month in lieu) & I've averaged out my weekly wages & it seem I should have been getting near enough full housing & council tax benefits.

Now my question to you is how do I go about getting my local benefits team to sort this out ASAP, because I am currently £690 in debt with my rent & £550 in debt with my council tax & judging by my calculations they infact owe me £1000s.

Please help, because I can't sleep because I am at risk of losing my home, because I am not yet a secure tenant & no one seems to be helping & I am getting conflicting information.

I infact don't know how they have come up with their (other income) sum.

Thank you

GrumpyPL

Hi mjcbright, welcome to MSE.

This seems to be a complicated issue and may involve having the benefits office backdate payments to you and pay monies owed to you too. However, we don't really have a lot of benefit experts here.

Have you thought about taking a trip down to your local Citizens Advice Bureau? You can use their website to find the closest center where they offer advice to you. Their advice is 100% free, confidential, and they have experts who can deal exactly with these types of issues: http://www.citizensadvice.org.uk/

Best of luck getting this resolved.

mjcbright

I will be looking to go down at the earliest opportunity, I'm in work all this week so a little complicated.

GrumpyPL

mjcbright wrote: »

I will be looking to go down at the earliest opportunity, I'm in work all this week so a little complicated.

Unfortunately, whilst generally speaking MSE is full of a bunch of nice people, not a lot are experts with benefits and stuff so it might be a bit difficult finding someone here to help.

All I'd advise is writing to the benefits office, stating your intentions to proceed with a request for a full investigation, and get down to CAB asap where an experienced advisor can help you get everything sorted.

mjcbright

Thanks for your advice grumpypl ��.

Poppie68

Op if you check back later today you will hopefully have some replies from those in the know...We have people with expertise including HB, CTC, TC....some currently work in the associated departments so can offer up to date advice....there are also numerous others with extensive correct knowledge.


Edit....forgot to add....Contact SHELTER 0808 800 4444....they will be able to help with free expert advice and can offer help on a more practical level..check their website out..

GrumpyPL

Poppie68 wrote: »

Op if you check back later today you will hopefully have some replies from those in the know...We have people with expertise including HB, CTC, TC....some currently work in the associated departments so can offer up to date advice....there are also numerous others with extensive correct knowledge.

There are people "in-the-know" but nobody will help OP more than somebody at CAB.

Poppie68

GrumpyPL wrote: »

There are people "in-the-know" but nobody will help OP more than somebody at CAB.

CAB get it wrong a lot of the time .....and getting the advice in the first place is a feat in it's self....the OP is in urgent need of help waiting a couple of weeks for a CAB appointment is not an option...
SHELTER are better equipped to help with housing matters including correct advice and practical support.
She will also be able to get good, factually correct advice and correct signposting from this board.....after all that's what this board is for.

GrumpyPL

Poppie68 wrote: »

CAB get it wrong a lot of the time .....and getting the advice in the first place is a feat in it's self....the OP is in urgent need of help waiting a couple of weeks for a CAB appointment is not an option...
SHELTER are better equipped to help with housing matters including correct advice and practical support.
She will also be able to get good, factually correct advice and correct signposting from this board.....after all that's what this board is for.

CAB are trained advisors, I've never had an issue with them. As for appointments taking "a couple of weeks", I've always turned up on the day, with no prior notice and been able to speak to someone about my issue.

With the greatest of respect to everyone that helps out on this board (and I do have the upmost respect for you all, you do a great job), speaking to somebody on here isn't going to stop this lady (OP) from being evicted from her home. She needs CAB to sit with her and get onto the benefits office asap.

stevemLS

GrumpyPL wrote: »

CAB are trained advisors, I've never had an issue with them. As for appointments taking "a couple of weeks", I've always turned up on the day, with no prior notice and been able to speak to someone about my issue.

With the greatest of respect to everyone that helps out on this board (and I do have the upmost respect for you all, you do a great job), speaking to somebody on here isn't going to stop this lady (OP) from being evicted from her home. She needs CAB to sit with her and get onto the benefits office asap.

You joined up this month, have 30 odd posts to your name, yet you feel able to run down the people here quite disrespectfully.

There are people on here who work in the system and who have otherwise gained great expertise in how the benefits system works (I am not one of them).

kingfisherblue

With respect, GrumpyPL, CAB can and do get things wrong at times. They may be trained advisors, but they cannot possibly have training for every situation, and some are not trained in benefit information. My son-in-law volunteered for the CAB before getting a full time job, and his training barely touched on benefits.


There are good CAB advisors and bad ones, just as there are posters who are good and bad. On this board, Housing Benefit Officer springs to mind for the OP's problem, although there are several others who have knowledge and experience as well. The posters here also signpost to other agencies who may be able to help (such as Poppie68 above, who has recommended Shelter). There are also instances where posters give links to relevant government website pages to support their advice and to aid those needing help in their problems.


Now, to return to the OP (and with my apologies for going off topic), are your expenses shown separately on your pay slip? They should be shown as travel expenses and not taxed, so that may help you to prove that they are not earned income. However, it is an area I know little about, but I'm sure that others will be along later in the day to advise.


I hope that you manage to get everything sorted soon.