Benefit help wanted please..confused :)

[jacko251]

Hi, I am new here. I was directed to the forum by a friend who uses the site regularly and I would appreciate any help that I could get.

 

I work part time in a pub, earning £119 per week.

 

My husband has always worked full time but lost his job last week through redundancy. Because he swapped jobs 18 months ago he will not be entitled to any redundancy pay and with the current situation, the pub where I work is closed and my employer is sorting out with HMRC for 80% of my wages.

 

So... we know absolutely nothing about claiming benefits as we have always worked. Anyway, I managed to submit a claim for Universal Credit last week and we have had over the phone interviews. We have been accepted for an advance to last us until the first payment is made and we have to pay it back over several months.

 

We have just been told by a relative that my husband should be able to claim new style JSA for 182 days separately but as well as universal credit as he has made enough national insurance contributions.

 

Is this right? As I wouldn't want to try to claim something else and mess up the original claim. Also, would it just get deducted from the universal credit claim anyway as extra income? Or perhaps so much in the pound? I am confused.

 

Any help or advice would be greatly appreciated as we are quite worried about it all and we totally understand there are millions of people also in a state at the moment. Hope everyone is ok and staying safe...that is the most important thing!

 

Thank you in advance.

[honeybee13]

Hello and welcome to CAG. I'm sorry to hear about your problems.

 

People should be along later to advise, please bear with us until they're able to get here.

 

Best, HB

[Andyorch]

New Style JSA is paid if you have enough national insurance contributions and can either be claimed on its own or with a top up of Universal Credit (UC) if you live in a full service UC area and need to claim for other family members or housing costs, for example.

 

http://benefitsaware.centralenglandlc.org.uk/new-style-job-seekers-allowance/

[jacko251]

thank you for a quick reply

 

[unclebulgaria67]

Please be  aware that if there is a Universal Credit  claim and New Style Contributions based JSA claim, that the amount of JSA will be deducted from the Universal Credit payments.

 

The reason some people claim the JSA amount in addition to UC, is that JSA is paid fortnightly, so it can help with budgeting.

 

https://www.gov.uk/guidance/new-style-jobseekers-allowance

 

Another issue you need to be aware of, is that if the employers report any final wages and holiday pay late, that this may then be considered, when the first UC monthly payment is calculated.  UC will always take into account any employment earnings that are reported during any UC assessment period.   If this does happen and you can prove that the earnings were actually paid before the UC claim, started you can raise a dispute with UC.  Obviously wait until the first UC statement is added about 3 days after the end of the first UC assessment period.  It may all be correct hopefully, but thought it was worth mentioning.

[jacko251]

Thank you for the reply.

I am just wondering if it might then be a good idea to claim the JSA as I think our first payment for UC will probably be zero anyway as the assessment period will show that my husband received around 700 pounds from his employer...final pay, holidays owed etc and although it might sound great, it has only just about scraped to pay our bills for this month and so if I am right, we will have to now wait until the end of May before they actually pay us anything.

If we also claim the JSA, we would still get paid that wouldn't we?

And in the following months (unless he's back in a job) the JSA will just get deducted from the UC so we wouldn't be any worse off.

Am I right? Is it a good idea or not?

As you can tell we are definitely not clued up on this and don't want to shoot ourselves in the foot.

Thanks again