Does Payment In Lieu Of Notice affect when you can start claiming New Style Jobseeker's Allowance?

Shadweller

Hi,

Apologies if this has already been asked, but I have searched and not been able to find any answers.

After having gone through the redundancy process, today I have formally been given Payment In Lieu Of Notice for the next 4 weeks, with immediate effect.

Normally this would not be a cause for celebration, but in my case on this occasion I am taking the view that I have been set free to look for a new job, with what is in effect a gift of 4 weeks pay, (as I don't have to work that 4 weeks), plus a relatively small but still extremely useful and valuable redundancy payment, plus any payments in lieu of any holidays not taken. On top of all that, I am escaping a job that I was desperate to leave, under the best possible circumstances, so I am very relieved and happy to have an ideal opportunity to find a more suitable job.

One thing I'm not sure about though, is whether I will have to wait until after I receive the payment in lieu of notice, and my other payments, towards the end of the month, before I can sign on. As far as I think I understand things, I would imagine the PILON and other payments for June would mean that I do have another source of income until the date that I get paid. Meaning that I cannot or should not claim benefits until the day after that payment. After that, I will not be receiving any more income from that work place or any where else. As far as I understand it, that is the crucial thing when it comes to unemployment benefits.

I will need to be looking at New Style Jobseeker's Allowance, rather than Universal Credit as due to my savings and the income from all the above mentioned payouts will take me over, or very close to the £16,000 cut off threshold for claiming U.C. I Understand that NSJSA is not affected by savings and that people are entitled to claim this benefit for up for up to 6 months if necessary. This is if they have paid enough National insurance contributions over the last 3 or 4 years, and I will have done as I been employed and paying NI the whole time.

Has anyone else been in this situation, or anything similar, or know what the process is?

Any information would be gratefully received.

Thanks in advance.

huckster

You may be still employed and on garden leave for 4 weeks, if so you cannot claim NS JSA until the day after your employment has officially ended (assuming you had been working previously 16 or more hours per week).  And the employers will issue a P45 to confirm the end of employment.  * Edit - Some employers end the employment straightaway and confirm this, so it depends on termination of employment date provided

So you may have to wait 4 weeks before you can claim NS JSA.

Yes savings do not affect NS JSA and it would only be in your name for up to 6 months while you are job seeking.

At the moment, there are still quite a lot of jobs available ( but signs of reducing vacancies compare to a year ago) and you are best advised to start making a volume of applications.  See if you can get a job within say 6 weeks.   Once you get to the middle of July, due to school holidays and companies not having as many staff available to help with recruitment, it is common for recruitment to slow or be put on hold. This could then mean that any job start is delayed until the Autumn.  So advisable to spend time submitting as many applications as you can.  Make sure your application and/CV aligns with the skills/experience the employers are looking for.  So many people just submit applications with general list of employment and basic skills, not really explaining all of the skills and experience they have.  

Shadweller

Thanks for the advice Huckster.

I'm definitely not still employed or on gardening leave, my employment officially ended today, with a payment in lieu of notice.

I've just gone through the process of inputting a claim for NSJSA, and only stopped short of clicking the 'submit application' button right at the very end. Along the way I was asked if I had any more payments due, to which I responded yes.

I'm not sure whether or not this will affect when my NSJSA payments can start.

I do take on board the advice that it's best to get down to applying for new jobs asap, however the last 6 months has been extremely hectic, and I've had to work long extra hours of unpaid overtime including weekends, and am possibly quite close to burnout. I really need some recovery and recharge time.

I may well give myself a week or maybe 2, before I click that final submit button. I know what it means to be signing on for work these days, in as much as you have to be actively seeking work, provide evidence that you are doing this, and be available and ready to start work immediately. So before I commit to all that I may well take at least 1 week off of everything in order to hopefully go some way towards recharging. And then hopefully return more refreshed and positive and ready to start the job seeking process in a more energetic and enthusiastic frame of mind.

I've only had 1 week off all year and even that week turned out to be far too hectic and did not offer me the chance to unwind and recharge anywhere as much as I'd have liked.

Shadweller

I probably should have mentioned some of the above in my first post, but I didn't want to make it too long, detailed, and complicated. I guess one to 2 weeks break would be considered reasonable in the circumstances, by the Job Centre and any future employers. Any more than that and it could start to look self indulgent or like there's something wrong with me. Obviously I'm not going to mention being close to burnout to any future employer.

Looking for work isn't as demanding as holding down a job, although it isn't a doddle either. Obviously you have to be 'up for it' and be properly prepared or you won't get anywhere.

I guess I will find out what will happen when I hit that 'submit claim' button at some point not too far away. 

Spendless

Back at the end of 1997 I got made redundant with 6 weeks pay included in my redundnay pay in lieu of notice. I wasn't able to claim JSA until this time was over. I think back then you made the claim (via the job centre, online not being a thing) but you couldn't receive any JSA until after the date of what you'd been paid in lieu.

I'd be surprised to find if they've since changed this.
 

sammyjammy

Regardless the OP should  make the claim when he is ready, PILON does not include the credit of NI as the employment ended at a date before the 4 weeks, JSA will include these credits even if payment is suspended for the PILON period.

Spoonie_Turtle

NI credits are to be considered, definitely.

But it struck me that if you're close to burnout, OP, you don't actually have to claim JSA immediately.  If you've got a decent financial cushion to live on for the 4 weeks you could simply take those as time off to recover (or even a little longer, if need be).  Your 6 months' entitlement to JSA will remain the same whenever you start it, so when exactly you claim doesn't really matter from that perspective.

Obviously that has to be juggled against what to put on job applications, although a small gap since you didn't have any proper holiday and worked lots of unpaid overtime in the last year you'd think shouldn't be concerning to any reasonable employer.

Shadweller

I think I should be fine with the NI credits. I already have 31 full years, and I have another 15 years of work and / or signing on to achieve at least the 4 more years of full NI contributions required in order to qualify for a full state pension, one way or another.

Assuming that they don't move the goal posts in order to incentivise having more than 35 full years at some point in the future, at this stage I'm not bothered about having the odd gap in my NI years here and there. As things stand at the moment it doesn't look like it will matter.

Of course we don't know if the criteria might change in the future. Does anyone have any thoughts on how likely that may be?

If it is not completely out of the question that there could be some incentive to have more than 35 years full NI contributions at some point in the future, then I'd probably consider topping up one year where I just have a small financial shortfall (£95) and there is the possibility of a similar thing happening over the next few weeks if I don't sign on. Leaving me with another small gap to plug, should I choose.

I can't remember what happened to cause the short gap in contributions a few years ago but it was probably some kind of similar scenario, involving a delay in signing on after a job ended.

It seems to me that it would be difficult or unusual to not achieve the full 35 years. I don't get it. Assuming you were in the country the whole time and either working or claiming benefits the whole you really cannot fail to easily surpass it. I had 6 years out of NI contributions for higher education too, and so I guess those professions that take even more years additional of education to qualify would be well behind in their NI years, but they'd probably go on to be such big earners that they wouldn't have to be overly concerned about qualifying for a state pension.

I seem to have gone off on a bit of a tangent and rabbited on a lot here. I guess this subject opened up a topic that leaves me a bit perplexed.

calcotti

Shadweller said:

I think I should be fine with the NI credits. I already have 31 full years, and I have another 15 years of work and / or signing on to achieve at least the 4 more years of full NI contributions required in order to qualify for a full state pension, one way or another.

Are you in a transitional period and the number of years of NI to achieve full
State Pension could be more or less than 35. To find out you would need to get a pension forecast.

Newcad

When you claim NS-JSA, or even if you claim it at all, is entirely up to you.

You can claim from the date on your P45.

However if you do claim now it will not pay anything until your notice period has ended, and any number of days for which you get holiday pay used up.

A payment 'in lieu of notice' is also know as a 'period compensation payment' the period being compensated for is the notice period you would normally have expected/been entiled to be given.
The DWP still class it as being earnings for that notice period. (Although they can change the period end date if the compensation is more, or less, than the wages you would normally have been paid during your notice period).

The days for holiday pay is perhaps a bit more contentious, but that is the DWP rule.

When/if you do claim JSA it can run for six months from that claim date.

calcotti

New cad said:

When/if you do claim JSA it can run for six months from that claim date.

In your post you highlight why payment of JSA be deferred from the claim date. Will the  claimant not get six months of payment from when the payment entitlement commences.