UC help !!

kay2016

Hi,
This is the first month we have claimed UC due to my husband being out of work - I work 24 hours a week part time. 

Our first statement has been done and shows a payment of £0, we have called UC who said it’s due to my husbands wage. 

He received a final payment on 8th Aug from his employer 
Our first assessment period is from 18th Aug - 17th Sep 
UC have now advised that they will open an RTI query - we have no idea what this is, how long it takes etc 
we have said we can provide a bank statement to show we have not had a wage payment in this time.
I’m now worried sick as my part time wage is not going to cover our monthly spending - it will cover the mortgage payment and that is all but then how do we survive a whole month with 2 children.

Has anyone been in this situation ? 

Brie

First thing is to call all your creditors including your mortgage provider and tell them you have a (hopefully) temporary glitch on the money front and that you need to stop making your payments for a couple of months.  Follow this up with stopping your DDs so they don't take the money and clear out your account(s).  Mortgage providers are setting up interest free periods for 6 months so you might want to ask about that as well.

You could post a statement of accounts on the debt free board to get a bit of emergency budgeting advice.  Alternatives are to contact citizens advice, national debtline, stepchange or a money adviser at your local food bank.  

As an extra - check where you are with your TV license.  If you are paying monthly by DD and are half way between renewal dates you have already paid for the next 6 months so can pick this up again in 6 months time - it gives you some breathing space.

Best of luck on getting through it!

Rubyroobs

It sounds like his employer has reported his earnings very late for some reason. It should be able to be rectified but can take a while.

Icequeen1

As already said, UC use the date that the information is received from HMRC. This is party dependent on the date your employer put as the payment date on the submission sent to HMRC. Sometimes that is the same as the actual payment date, sometimes it is the contractual payment date. It is also dependent on when the employer actually sent the submission to HMRC. 

Does your husband have a personal tax account? He might be able to check if the date is in there. If it looks like the employer has submitted late or put a different date in the payment box you can ask UC to reallocate it

IQ

Newcad

There are another couple of possibilities here;

Firstly did the final payment include wages in lieu of notice?
If it did then those wages might have been reported to HMRC on the date that they were due to be paid rather than the earlier date when they were actually paid.

Secondly it is also not unknown for a company payroll department to continue to send an ex-employees 'wages' information (RTI) to HMRC in error, even after that employee no longer works there and is no longer being paid.
In those cases as far as HMRC are aware the person is still receiving wages, and so that is what they will tell UC.

In that situation it is the ex-employer who needs to correct the regular information that they send to HMRC, and correct the error already made, which usually takes a bit longer to sort out than if it's simply late reporting of the final wage.

kay2016

Universal credit have responded with the attached - surely they can’t leave us a whole month with nothing but saying he may of been paid early but it’s is reported as a contractual payday ? 

I’m really stressed, worried and anxious about how I’m going to get through the next month 

Spoonie_Turtle

You should be able to challenge it with bank statements to show when you received money.  There's a provision in the legislation that RTI can be overridden in calculations if there's information to show it's not accurate (I forget the exact wording).  UC is calculated on what you've actually received in the assessment period, and as you haven't received money they say you have then the calculation is wrong

I had a similar thing in 2019, although I did receive some money in the assessment period, my payslip showed the main bulk of what I'd been paid earlier in the month (before claiming) all in one amount with a bit of backpay that I did receive in the assessment period.  I had a great work coach at that time who got it sorted for me, I'm not sure quite where you could turn if you don't have someone in your corner like that 😕

Alice_Holt

This has info about RTI disputes:

https://revenuebenefits.org.uk/universal-credit/guidance/entitlement-to-uc/rti-and-universal-credit/