To wonder why there hasn’t been a thread about the 4th SEISS grant?

[Oilseed]

Just that really, I’m disgusted at the way SE people have been treated. We’ve had no money since the first week in Dec. September and October last year were skipped completely yet that just seems to have been brushed under the carpet.

Where I am, we got put into lockdown on 31st October last year until 2nd Dec. We then got 2 weeks of no lockdown before being locked down again on 26th Dec until last week.

I’m SE, I’ve luckily still been managing to work throughout the pandemic but monthly income is down by £1,200 a month. I’m barely scraping £1000 a month now as Covid has hit my industry hard in the fact that people don’t really need my industries services as so many have been WFH.

I’ve been picking up Amazon delivery slots as and when I can, but they go like hot cakes as I’m guessing so many are in the same boat. My husband has had to pay my half of the mortgage for the last 6 months and I try and do the food shop and pay a couple of small bills with my wage but I’m barely able to do that anymore. The guilt each day is awful.

I’ve applied for 100’s of office based roles over the last few months and resigned myself to just giving up my business completely if I got one, but I’ve had no joy and again, I’m assuming competition is fierce.

I need this grant so badly yet I feel like I’m the only one as when RS announced on 3rd March that it would be paid in arrears late April / early May, when it’s meant to have covered Feb. March and April, none of my SE friends said anything other than ‘yeh it’s annoying isn’t it.’

I came on here expecting to see a thread but I didn’t and don’t remember seeing a subsequent one.

I know there’s nothing people can really do so you could argue what’s the point in talking about it but I just feel the SE, compared to the employed really haven’t been treated very fairly.

You can guarantee if the government stopped furlough for 2 months last year and expected people to just ‘survive’ there would’ve been national uproar. And if the however many millions of people that have been furloughed hadn’t received any money since the first week in Dec...again, 4 months later (probably 5 months after it’s actually been paid) people would be absolutely destitute.

It’s the 8th April, the exhaust has just gone on my car, I had to tax it last week and my insurance is up for renewal this weekend and I’m going to have to go my husband and ask to take money out of the joint pot because I just don’t have it, yet I need my car for work. I’ve just been sat here thinking, what would I have done if I didn’t have him?! A lot of people won’t be that lucky, it’s awful and I guess I just can’t understand why there hasn’t been more fuss made considering the amount of SE people in the U.K.

Try being the director of a one person limited company.

I agree that the way it's been done is really unfair. For the first two qualifying years my husband was employed but did a tiny bit of self employed work on the side. We're talking about £1000/ £2000 a year.

They used these figures to create his average which made it look like his earnings were really low.

we tried to argue that as to be eligible to claim, your self employment had to be over 50% of your earnings, then surely these two years shouldn't be counted as his main income those years was employment.

They wouldn't listen so his £30k earnings they decided were on only 11k and that's the figures they've been working on

Try being the director of a one person limited company.

Same Newname1239

YANBU. I’m self employed and I’ve had none of the SEISS grants. I lost £40,000 business last year, and with restrictions looks like I’ll loose the same this year. I can’t shut up shop because of clients that have booked and paid large deposits who are relying on my services, but my industry is on its knees.

Oh, and I miss out because of maternity leave and being newer full time self employed. HMRC won’t take either into consideration.

@Florabella

It has to be more than 50% of your income to qualify for a grant

It's so bizarre, I have a small self-employed sideline and they've told me I qualify. I know I don't, so I've not applied but how many other people are they telling to apply who will then have to pay it back? And it wastes processing time that could be used for people who actually need it,

@Newname1239

Try being the director of a one person limited company.

I thank our lucky stars dh isn't - we've been meaning to move to limited for a couple of years but for various reasons it hadn't happened yet.

We got screwed over by the years though - business has grown a lot over the included years and in some years that meant a tiny profit/loss but it was due to investment (cash basis in the early years) rather than no income. The 4th one is more than double the previous grants due to the addition of the most recent year, despite them averaging over 4 years.

Honestly employed people would have gone absolutely batshit if this had happened to them. Every woman who had taken maternity leave getting an income based on years which included SMP? Relatively recent grads getting averaged over years when they were students only working very part time?

I’m just outside the SE. I applied for my grant and it was in the bank 3 days later.

Call them up.

@LibrariesGiveUsPower45321

Oh, and I miss out because of maternity leave and being newer full time self employed. HMRC won’t take either into consideration.

HMRC can't take it into account because of the very strict laws which Rishi enacted. HMRC has to act within the letter of the law and has zero room for concession etc. The blame lies fairly and squarely with Rishi who has been told time and time again, month by month, for a year now, by other MPs, trade bodies, professional bodies, but is too stubborn to accept his mistakes and make the necessary changes to bring in more fairness.

I’m SE and feel really grateful for the grants. I don’t get why so many people feel so entitled for financial support from the government. We’ve been in a pandemic- shit happens and we need to adapt. I’ve topped up my income by finding alternative work like most of my SE colleagues have

I think there is a SEISS 4 thread on moneysavingexorcist

DP eligible for SEISS 1,2 & 3 but apparently not eligible for #4 because his employment creation job subsidy incentivised employer made him PAYE for 48 weeks between the previous 2 tax years, then made him self employed once the subsidy ran out then a month later Covid happened.

This thread has really shocked me. I had no idea what was going on for self employed people. The media doesn't seem to have given it as much coverage as the issue deserves. I don't understand why people think the government has handled the pandemic so well.

“I’ve topped up my income by finding alternative work like most of my SE colleagues have”

Good for you.

Nobody I know has managed to do that though...

Thanks Clydesider, it's nice to hear that when many have had no sympathy for us. There's been a lot of campaigning, the largest All lParty Parliamentary Group ever (apparently) advocating for us, and at times some publicity, but the Govt hasn't moved and Rishi avoids the questions. I've been in Excluded UK and Forgotten Ltd Facebook groups and there have been some desperate stories. In some ways the mental health impacts of being left out have been worse than the financial loss, many of us have felt suicidal. I feel sorry particularly for people in industries such as weddings and travel that have been on and off - many say they've never been busier ... rearranging over and over again as things change whilst getting no income at all.

Yanbu but spare a thought for people like me. I was on a zero hours contract pre pandemic, working from home which meant our animals didn't have to be left alone. It was flexible so I could be available for dc hospital appointments etc.
My wages stopped. I received furlough for 8 weeks, thats it. I applied for help with council tax and it took them 3 months to say that I needed to provide a p45 to receive any help. I don't have one as I'm still employed!

I meant to say that dh is currently working 52 hour weeks to pay the bills, I'm not sure how we manage but somehow we are.

@tabulahrasa

“I’ve topped up my income by finding alternative work like most of my SE colleagues have”

Good for you.

Nobody I know has managed to do that though...

I think a lot of it is mind set. I realise jobs aren’t that easy to come by, but a lot of people refuse to adapt even if it’s only for the interim.

People SE in the arts sector were advised by the government to retrain, at the time there was so much snobbery on Social Media from musicians for example with the attitude that they are clearly highly skilled so why should they retrain etc.

I’m SE in the Arts Sector and work in a highly skilled position. I spent most of lockdown packing wooden spoons to earn some money.I just got on with it as we’re in a pandemic....

Some people would rather moan about how hard done by they are though, it’s entitled and in some cases a little pathetic

Most people I know in my field got delivery jobs at supermarkets, others just ranted on SM as they clearly thought they were in some way special. It’s not a good look

The difficulty about getting other work for lots of people though was that there was still work in the business, maybe a few clients to keep ticking over or trying to pivot to new services and keeping the marketing going. I worked harder than previous years, but only got about 25% of my income for the first six months. The other problem was uncertainty about timing, clients kept saying projects were about to start again, and maybe one thing would happen but then you were back on hold again for weeks with no payment. I certainly couldn't have got another job without abandoning the clients I had, which would have been no good longer term. Plus as a lone parent and carer for my mum, full time work doesn't work at the best of times!

“Some people would rather moan about how hard done by they are though, it’s entitled and in some cases a little pathetic“

I was working from home for both full lockdowns except with fewer clients and less profit... everyone in my field was, or they’ve had to completely shut down with no real way of reopening now. In between lockdowns, I was working semi-normally except with covid measures in place, so still fewer clients than I can normally have... and more overheads.

I know some driving instructors - the market is through the roof for them, when they’re allowed to work, but they can’t get another job when everyone knows they’re going to go again in a few weeks.

I tried picking up work as a courier, which I’ve done before - no chance, everyone was applying.

If the sector you work in has been reopening and closing its very different from a sector that’s been closed the entire time.

My business had been going for 2 years and 10 months when the pandemic hit. I got nothing when I was forced to close (three times) I think they have changed the rules now but it’s too late and I don’t think they backdate it. If I had been employed I think they only needed three months. I’ve given up even trying to apply for anything, they just don’t want to help. I can’t even apply for universal credit because my partner earns too much. I don’t know why they think I don’t need money because my partner can just about scrape the bills together. I get angry when people try to tell others in my industry that they should have closed (dog groomer) when the gov gave very little help and very little guidance for much of it. Leaving it up to our discretion and whatever the individual councils decide we can do.

@CathyTurnbull

Most people I know in my field got delivery jobs at supermarkets, others just ranted on SM as they clearly thought they were in some way special. It’s not a good look

You can't just turn off a business and do something else, well not if you hope to carry it on after Covid. A business takes years to build up, make contacts, get customers. If you just drop all that, you have to start again from scratch. If some businesses you have obligations to either carry on servicing your customers, i.e. those on retainer contracts etc., or hand over your business to another to take on those customers/contracts. Taking on a full time job is often not possible to run alongside a much reduced business.

@CathyTurnbull

Most people I know in my field got delivery jobs at supermarkets, others just ranted on SM as they clearly thought they were in some way special. It’s not a good look

bit difficult to get work in a supermarket or delivery if you’re trying keep your business afloat whilst homeschooling three children.

@CathyTurnbull

I’m SE and feel really grateful for the grants. I don’t get why so many people feel so entitled for financial support from the government. We’ve been in a pandemic- shit happens and we need to adapt. I’ve topped up my income by finding alternative work like most of my SE colleagues have

How would it have gone down with the rest of the workforce if the government hadn’t introduced furlough? Imagine the outcry if they’d said to the UK workforce ‘shit happens. You shouldn’t feel entitled to any support’. My Friend is a barber and had zero income for ten months. He still has a mortgage to pay, kids to feed... but hey shit happens right?