New Style Jobseekers Allowance (nJSA)

singhini

Q1) - Is it "Jobseekers Act 1995" that is used to determine if nJSA is awarded? (in particular in interested in Contribution Based nJSA)



Q2) -  On the assumption that the answer to Q1 is YES, then
Q2 is: Where do they get the information from to base their decision on?
(The legislation reads "
(1) The conditions referred to in [F1 section 1(2)(d)] are that the claimant—

(a)has actually paid Class 1 contributions in respect of one (“the base year") of the last two complete years before the beginning of the relevant benefit year and satisfies the additional conditions set out in subsection (2);

Hence Q2) what is the source of the information to establish these two complete years? (Lets say if someone was to make a claim today i.e. 20th May 2025 then the last two complete years would be
Tax Year 2023/2024 
Tax Year 2024/2025

However if they look at a persons government gateway as the source of the information then Tax Year 2024/2025 would not yet show.

Q3) Does JSA money received count towards "Relevant Earnings" when determining an award for nJSA?
scenario is:
Person worked April, May, June, July 2025 with earnings of £1,000, £1,000, £1,000 and £1,438.44 (earnings from employment = £4,438.44p). Then they lost their job and went onto receive £2,353.01 i.e. 26 weeks nJSA. Therefore their earnings for "tax purposes" were £6,791.45p
So if they were to make another claim for nJSA in the future (where the previous claim does not link to this new claim and so another 182 day claim is allowed) and tax year 2025/2026 was being used to determine a decision, would they use £4,438.44p or £6,791.45p

Screenshot of the legislation i looked at below

Spendless

Im sure someone else will be along who can explain better but I don't think those tax years would be the ones looked at because I think they change each Jan. If Im correct the 2 tax years being looked at would be
22/23
23/24

Not sure what you mean in yr Q3 as its only May 2025 now. Do you mean a different year or what they anticpate working for the next few months?

singhini

@Spendless
Thanks for posting.

I get confused with the wording in the legislation to be honest. The legislation reads "the last two complete years before the beginning of the relevant benefit year"
So i just assumed it was the last two "complete tax years" before the claim (so a claim made today would look at 23/24 and 24/25).  

The Q3 question has a typo (apologies it should read the person worked the months of April, May, June, July 2024) and earnings totalled £4,438.44p and then received £2,353.01p of nJSA money  between Aug 2024 to Jan 2025 and then roughly the last 2 months of that "Tax Year 2024/2025" they received nJSA-NI Credits-Only
April to July 2024 = working and earning £4,438.44p
Aug 24 to Jan 2025 = nJSA = £2,353.01p
Feb 25 to March 2025 = NI-Credits Only awarded 
The question i suppose would be does this tax year count as a qualifying year for nJSA (and are they looking at £4,438 or £6,791)

Apologies once again, i just struggle to understand all the wording in the legislation 

 

p00hsticks

I think the current legislation is 'The Universal Credit, Personal Independence Payment, Jobseeker's Allowance and Employment and Support Allowance (Claims and Payments) Regulations 2013' 
https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2013/380/contents
 
As a previous poster has said, the 'Benefit year' advances on the first Monday of the calendar year. 
So currently nJSA claims will be looking at the tax years 2022-23 and 2023-24. 

After 4th January 2026 they will start to look at tax year 2023-24 and 2024-25. 

It's to allow for the fact that there needs to be a certain amount of time for the NI contributions records for a tax year to be updated - with Real Time Reporting it's generally a lot quicker now than when the legislation was first introduced, but there still needs to be a gap of at least a few months before thy can be sur that the records are compelte. 

singhini

@p00hsticks
Thanks for posting the information, really appreciated. 

So a claim made:
1st August 2024; they would have looked at 2021-2022 and 2022-2023
And a claim made tomorrow (21st May 2025); and they would look at 2022-2023 and 2023-2024

Have i understood that correctly? 

LITRG

Hello, hopefully this guidance and example will help: https://www.litrg.org.uk/working/employment/leaving-job/redundancy#15

singhini

@LITRG
Thankyou, the example has really helped.