Housing benefit for a single male

redban

Hello,

I'm looking for some advice for a good friend of mine who is struggling right now.

He is a 28yr old single male who for the past few years has been working in a pub and living in a room above the pub. The landlord would take money for the rent out of his wage and the remainder was left for him in the till. (The landlord lives some miles away and did not have much to do with the day-to-day running of the place). There were no official wage slips or anything and although the landlord claimed he was keeping track of the hours worked, my friend often felt he was being underpaid but didn't say anything due to his quiet nature and not wanting 'to make a fuss'.

A few months ago my friend moved out of the pub but continued to work there. He moved out due to a rodent infestation which the landlord was continually putting off sorting out.
The new accommodation that he found is, from what I can gather, a converted old hotel with rooms to rent and shared bathroom and kitchen facilities. It doesn't seem to be of a good standard and is in a badly regarded part of town but my friend is ok with it and it is only £60 a week.

Unfortunately, it seems that moving out of the pub further strained relations between my friend and the landlord to the point where it became intolerable for him to continue working there. A few weeks ago he quit.

Since then he's had a few vague offers of part time work in other pubs in the area but so far nothing concrete. However he is hoping something will soon come of it. In the meantime he's been supporting himself by busking on the street (he's a talented musician) and running errands for his disabled mother which she gives him a small amount of cash for (he's not her official care or anything).

Anyway, it's getting to the point where his rent is almost due and this is where things are getting difficult.
He's never claimed any benefits before in his life due to the system seeming so hard to navigate for him and also the off-putting reputation the jobcentre has as somewhere which is designed to hound and demoralize people. He'd rather just steer clear of the whole system and, up till now, has been able to do so.

My question is, would he be able to put in a claim solely for housing benefit without also having to claim jobseekers/universal credit, so as to avoid having to undergo the weekly signings in. He doesn't have any official records or wage slips to show where he was living and working previously.

Ideally he is hoping for a firm offer of part time work in one of the pubs where he already has good relations with the other staff who work there. I know that if this comes about he will gladly take as many hours of work there as he can get, along with busking in his spare time.

Thanks for reading and if anyone has any ideas on how I can best advise him as to how to proceed from here it would be greatly appreciated.

terryw

HB is based on income. It is not necessary to claim JSA to claim HB. He will of course have to produce accounts for his self-employed income and register with HMRC
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redban

Thanks for the reply. I can't see him being able to register with HMRC (he's not great at doing paperwork or anything like that). The amount he made when busking would've been a very small amount, just enough for him to buy food I'm guessing.

I think the only possible course of action seems to be to advise him to bite the bullet and apply for universal credit/jobseekers and therefore he'd hopefully qualify for hb as well. In the best case scenario he'd be made a firm offer of a job in the new pub before being forced to take a job he didn't really want to do.

Whether he'd be eligible for UC due to recently voluntarily quitting his last job is something I'm unsure of, made more confusing by the fact he wouldn't even technically be able to prove he was working there due to the lack of wage slips.

I've never worked in a pub but it seems the one he worked in did things loosely and perhaps even not even fully legally, I just don't know.

I'm hoping this new place, if it does take him on, will provide wage slips, etc so he can prove his low income to the housing benefits people if he can't get as many hours work there as he'd like.

Poppops

Did he never ask for a wage slip?

Surely he was concerned that he might not be paying the correct amount of income tax and NI? Or to check that he was paying it at all?

poppasmurf_bewdley

He can't claim for Housing Benefit. HB is only for people in social housing.

He needs to claim Housing Allowance, and being under 35 years old, he will be eligible for the shared room rate.

http://www.rbkc.hbupdate.co.uk/Help.aspx?helpfile=SharedRoom

redban

Hi Poppops,

I'm not sure for definite if he did ever ask for a wage slip, but I doubt it.

I think at the time he was, naively, just grateful for the job and the fact that he had somewhere to live. I don't think he would have wanted to rock the boat and risk displeasing his boss by questioning him too much. In the past when I've asked him about his wage he said that his hourly rate of pay was minimum wage.

I'm not sure how his boss would be able to get away without paying tax when he owned a licensed premises, i mean surely he would be subject to checks... but I guess anything is possible.

I'm guessing my friend could contact HMRC and ask about his own national insurance number and the amount of tax that had been paid.

Hi Poppasmurf,

thanks for that info. The Local Housing Allowance would be great for him if he could claim it as he already lives in shared accommodation so it would pretty much cover all his rent.