Question about out of work benefits

[PersephoneSmith]

I’m not trying to be goady, or bash anyone on benefits but I have a question that’s been raised by a family member.
If you lose your job, not redundancy, and you go to ‘sign on’ for the first time, presumably you have to provide bank statements, yes?
If you have a savings account with (say) £50k in it and you don’t provide these statements, don’t declare this account at all, is there any way that they will know you have these savings?
Is the process entirely dependent on the claimant honestly declaring all of their assets?
the current account has nothing relating to the savings account in it, no withdrawals or deposits that would give it away.

If HMRC know about the savings then yes they'll find out. Surely nobody with 50k savings is going to sign on though, really? That is truly scummy behaviour

They’ll find out and the claimant will be prosecuted for fraudulent activity

I was made redundant earlier this year, I signed on new style JSA , it’s not means tested at all, nothing to do with universal credit which is ,
I had a significant amount of savings, more than you mentioned , it’s totally irrelevant to JSA , you can claim for a maximum of 6 months, I had to attend weekly appointments at job centre , prove i was work searching & I got £90.50 per week .
I found a job fairly quickly though so didn’t do the entire 6 months but it was made clear that was the maximum term.
As far as I know it’s irrelevant whether you’ve been made redundant or left for another reason, you’re still job seeking and therefore entitled to job seekers allowance .

And i didn’t have to provide bank statements , nor was i ever asked about my savings .

Why? I have been a tax payer for 35 years , if I’m entitled why shouldn’t I claim , regardless of savings .
I know several people in my situation who have also claimed , you can only do so for 6 months.

Only for universal credit , you can claim new style JSA even if you have millions in the bank

Oh and finally , new style JSA is only payable if you’ve paid full NI contributions for the last 2 years I think but obviously you can google this info .

@bugalugs45 yep, last two complete tax years before the beginning of the benefit year.

Ok.. DWP (retired) here .
There are 2 types of benefit and entitlements.

1. is ‘income related’ . By which it means that the amount of money you would be entitled to claim is worked out with regard to your household income and almost all income related benefits have an absolute cut off to entitlement at 16k. These benefits include Universal Credit, JSA (income related) ESA (income related) Income support and housing benefit (administered by the local authority) . It means that whatever money your spouse or partner bring into the home reduces your entitlement. Do they know what savings you have ? Well yes and no. Twice a year a scan is run against all persons receiving income related benefits against a HMRC data base of interest paid on investments.. so whilst DWP can’t ’look In your account without just cause’ they will be flagged if you claim income related benefits and have received say £15k in interest for the year for example.. because that is way above the amount of interest paid on £15k of savings.. it’s a convoluted system but does mean there is ‘just cause’ to look at accounts..
2. contribution based entitlement. These are benefits paid to people who have ‘paid in’. ie paid the requisite amount of NI contributions over the last 2 complete tax years. If you have done this then you are entitled to claim based on this alone. No savings cap.. no household income calculation. Simply put .. you pay in - you get out. These payments come from the NI fund not general taxation. So you can’t
3. Disability Benefits. PiP /DLA /IICP not means tested and not contribution based. Simply based on an assessment of your disability or industrial injury.

How will they find out? That’s the question. Let’s assume that they are on a benefit that you cannot get if you have savings over a certain amount. Can your bank tell the government that you have a savings account with them?