UC utter bafflement

[ComeAlongPeggy]

I am supporting a local parent who claims UC. I have tried to answer her questions via the CAB and online and have drawn a blank so I’m asking here in case lots of you know the answer (they can’t be uncommon questions!).

She gets £1400 pm UC. She can work, but not ft because she is also a ft carer. But in month when she has worked and earned c£300, she has received the same amount of UC but has also been contacted by her local council for council tax payments (she previously had 100% of her council tax covered).

What she would like to know is how much she can earn each month without UC being reduced and without her council tax benefit being reduced.

To be absolutely clear, she’s not lazy and she works (unpaid) harder than I do in my 40 hour a week job. But every penny counts and because some weeks she can work more hours than others, her income is very “lumpy” (this is dependent on her caring responsibilities - eg during school holidays she can’t work at all, her child would not be able to access holiday clubs etc and a babysitter would cost as much as she would earn). Any paid work she does is very much like someone with a ft demanding job taking on an extra evening/weekend job so it really has to be worth her while financially as it puts her under quite significant physical and emotional strain to do any paid work at all. She would love nothing more than to be working ft and not claim UC but this won’t be possible for a few years at least.

If you’ve read this far, thank you! Any help to navigate this would be amazing. I have tried to speak to UC but they don’t seem to have clear cut off’s as to how much you can earn etc.

Another thing to add to all the snippets of info posted is - the Carers Element of UC is actually less than Carers Allowance. So, a lone Carer of a young adult dc in receipt of Carers Allowance has a WA of only £222.

Basically it’s all fucking depressing.
I get carers allowance and work pt.
A few months ago I was paid some work in the wrong month, I didn’t earn any more. It was just missed by payroll and added to the month after. So I went about a tenner over the limit and lost my entire carers allowance for a month.

The work allowance is the same whether a claimant claims carer’s allowance or not. The WA doesn’t reduce because someone claims CA. The deduction for carer’s allowance is separate to the work allowance and will be made whether the claimant uses none, some or all of their work allowance.

@SearchingForSolitude - sorry but the end result is that it does reduce the WA.

Standard Allowance 368.74
Carers Element 185.86

Total UC Entitlement 554.60
less Carers Allowance -368.74

Total UC 222.02

So only 222.02 that is subject to the WA taper.

The CA deduction is not £368.74. It is £332.58 per month.

Your last post hasn’t reduced the work allowance by the CA deduction. It has reduced the total of the UC elements. That is not the same as the work allowance.

It is important to distinguish between the deduction for CA and the WA because they are completely separate. It does not always result in the same thing. For example, a person claiming CA but not working at all so doesn’t use any of their work allowance still has the CA deducted £ for £. Giving the impression the WA can mitigate the CA deduction confuses claimants and results in some thinking the CA deduction is less than it is.

But that Carers Allowance is money you are paid from another source.

You can't pretend you don't get it, just because your UC is reduced by the same amount.

To give a worked example:

Standard allowance. £368.74
First child. £315
Severely disabled child element £456.89
Carer element. £185.86
Rent. £400
Total of elements = £1726.49

Earnings - full work allowance for someone with a housing element. Then remaining amount x 0.55 to give earning deduction.
£550 - £379 = £171 x 0.55 = £94.05

Total - CA deduction - earnings deduction = UC award
£1726.49 - 332.58 - 94.05 = 1299.89

VS using your figure of a work allowance of only £202

Earnings - your work allowance. Then the remaining amount x 0.55
£550 - £202 = £348 x 0.55 = 191.40

Total - your proposed earnings deduction = what the award would using £202 for the WA.
£1726.49 - £191.40 = £1535.09

Apologies you said £222, not £202, but the point still stands and you can see the outcome would still not be the same.

I'm a carer for a disabled child. I recently worked out if I earnt £100 a week I would be £3 odd better off a week because I would loose the council tax help.

It's depressing I feel for her. I know that feeling I want to work and have that sense of self and self respect to escape the onerous role of carer I want to have more in my life that this. But faced with the reality of the finances workin when you are already exhausted it's not worth it for pennies. it makes being a carer harder to bear I have found.

OK, maybe it is the other way round. Not much to live on either way. And Lougle I'm not pretending I don't get Carers Allowance, that £76pw is sometimes all I get so I rely on it. I'd much rather not have had my earnings and work capacity limited for nearly the past 20years due to ds's disability but too late for tears now (they've already been cried).

As far as Council Tax Support is administered in my local area, my earnings are now subject to a greater penalty.

I'm 61, look older than that and my teeth are now falling out, but I've got to keep on this 'system' until I'm 67.

And I don't get the housing element because I own with a mortgage of about £270pcm. Which comes out of my £222 UC (less any earnings which are becoming less and less) and my Carers Allowance. Council Tax currently at £70pcm as they keep mucking about with my direct debit payments.

Your situation is completely different to the person in the OP. The situations are not comparable. The DC in the OP is still a child therefore if there isn’t a housing element they will have a higher work allowance (£631 as opposed to £379). They will get a child element and a severely disabled child element. Your adult DS will get his own benefits.

I just think we can slice UC in so many ways that it doesn't actually bear resemblance.

Our deduction for earnings is more than our rent. Do we get to say 'we don't get help with rent'? Or do we say that we get full help with rent but we don't get any UC for one of our children? Etc., etc.,

The reality is, we get all of it. We then just get some of it taken away again.

@MirrorBack I’m so sorry that happened. It’s so clunky and unfair

@PurpleBugz sounds like you’re in a similar situation. It’s so shit. I’m really sorry. The kicker is that once it’s possible to go back to work and not be penalised you’ve been out of work for a long time so it’s that bit harder to find a good job with a good salary.