This is totally not the right board for this, but I'm in desperate need of knowing how student finance, and more specifically a student maintenance loan will affect universal credit payments please.
I've spoken to student finance, the university money advice team, citizens advice, and universal credit themselves, and nobody seems to be able to give me an answer.
The situation is that myself and my partner have 2 toddlers and claim UC. My partner works full time and I work part time. We only receive the childcare element of UC where they pay up to 85% of our childcare costs. Our employment and earnings from employment will not change.
The spanner in the works is that I have been accepted to do a degree course and have applied for student finance and am eligible for the full maintenance loan of nearly £10k per year, but have since been advised by the university money advice team, that this will be classed as income for the purposes of UC. UC's call centre don't know the answer, and UC have not answered my online journal question from a week ago.
Is anybody here in this same situation? If they add the loan as income, does that mean that they won't pay my childcare element anymore? As if they don't, I cannot afford to do the degree, and will have to cancel the whole thing and just carry on working part-time in a dead end job.
I'm so frustrated at the lack of information on this. I've even spoken to Citizens advice on their UC line and they can't help either.
How on earth am I supposed to find out how I will be affected? Any help that you could give me would be most appreciated please, as I'm going round in circles at the moment and am in desperate need of knowing how the loan will affect my childcare payments, as it may be that I need to put a halt to this whole idea now before the money comes in and causes me income issues.
Thank you so much for any advice you can offer.