housing benefit.fluctuating working hours

rightletsgo

Hi everyone,first ever post

I'm recieving housing benefit after i was i made redundant 3 months ago

I'v just been offered a job at my local hospital,the problem is,,,my hours will be 20.5 guaranteed and maybe up to 37.5 hours per week,,,,my problem is that if i only get the 20.5 hours every week it won't be enough to live on,,,will i still recieve help with my housing and council tax bills ? if so,how will my local council do this ,maybe my hours and salary will be quite differnet every week within a monthly period

I'm a bit worried that i will be potentially worse off working

TYhanks for any replies

Cheers

real1314

Standard approach is to use 2 months wages if paid monthly or 5 weeks wages if paid weekly.

They take an average and use that. They can vary this to a different period if it can be shown that this would provide a more reasonable estimate of earnings (e.g if someone was working 10hrs one week, 20 hrs the next, paid weekly, a 5 week would have either 3 x 10 hrs and 2 x 20 or vice versa - a 6 week system could be used).

Reviewed at "regular" intervals.

rightletsgo

Thanks for ur reply !

So it is possible that my local council would help me then.

How about backdating etc ? if i must hand in 2 months wage slips or 5 weeks of pay slips,there is obviously going to be a delay in me sending them to the council,do they accept this practice ?

Thanks again

real1314

Claim straight away, they won't backdate more than 1 month, and often won't backdate at all. If you can get your emplyer to provide an estimate of your earnings over the next 2 months, they should be able to use that to start with, then once you have each payslip, send it in to them.