redundancy, PILON period, unemployment benefit & 30 days free childcare grace eligibility mismatch

diverdee

Sharing this for anyone who is\will be made redundant during this period who also claims 30 hours free childcare .

If you are paid in lieu of notice you are unable to claim unemployment benefit until your PILON period ends.

However from a childcare perspective your eligibility ends (& your 'grace' period starts) on your redundancy date, not the PILON end date which potentially negatively affects your 30 hours childcare 'grace period'.

There's a mismatch here from a customer experience perspective with the different government departments working to different rules which could potentially result in losing access to your 30 free hours sooner than you would if you 'worked' your notice period.

In retrospect if I had known this I would have asked for my PILON to be paid out over the course of the period, rather than as part of my redundancy, the unemployment benefit elgibility would have stayed the same, the money I received would have been the same, but it would have meant that I would have been eligible for another term of 30 hours childcare under the 'grace' period rules.

Icequeen1

When you say your eligibility ends and your grace period starts on your redundancy date, my understanding is that eligibility doesn't end until the reconfirmation date (which is every 3 months). If you can't reconfirm, because you have fallen out of eligibliity, then the grace period kicks in. Was your reconfirmation date around the same time as your redundancy date?