Uc have paid way under the 85% back on childcare.

[Synox]

Hey,
So today I checked my uc payment and the child care element was just over £95 I paid £448 to nursery for the month of August. My earnings were £285 for this assessment period. I've sent a message in my journal but wondering if someone could shed some light on the situation.

The first thing to check is the dates- does your nursery month actually line up with your assessment period? If not then the other days will be paid in your next assessment period.

The other potential things off the top of my head could be:

• Only certain costs are reimbursed by UC, they will refund towards the daily costs but extras like nappies/consumables charges are not refunded.
• DWP looks at the charges & your working pattern, so if you’re only working for example 1 day a week then they aren’t going to reimburse you for 3 days of childcare a week because they only fund the childcare to enable you to work. If you’re only working 1 day then they only pay towards that 1 day, any other childcare days are yours to fund.

I work to days a week and he is only in for those 2 days. My assessment period is from the 26th to 25th and my nursery fees are from the first until the last day of the month.

It may be that you’re not working enough to justify those costs.

If you only earned £285 this month, even assuming NMW pay of £12.20ish per hour, then you have only worked 23 hours that month. 23 hours in a month so only 5.7 hours a week, if that’s 2 days a week you can only be working 2.5 hours per day? The DWP would likely look at that amount of work vs the amount of childcare as excessive.

I have worked 10-12 hours over 2 days, I am charged at nursery for those 2 days so surely that's not excessive? He isn't in for a full day and usually only 30mins- 1hr between me finishing work and his pick up time/ drop off time.

Uc was calculated off of July's pay sorry so that 280 is from July, this months will be more. I also payed for 2 session in July.

If you’ve worked 10-12 hours every week your pay would be higher than £285 and you’d not have this issue.

But £285 at NMW is more like 23 hours, over a month, which isn't 10-12 hours a week.

Rechecking my payslip for July it says I earned £522 for that month so I'm going to have to phone them up because none of it is right as it says my employer reported £258. At this point I don't know whats going on 🙃