OH has been made redundant - what are we really entitled to nothing??

[Macarena1990]

OH was made redundant a couple of weeks back. He has only been with the company 6 months and so is only getting a weeks pay and his outstanding holiday (a week) in settlement. I am a SAHM, we have 3 kids and the mortgage/house is in my name.

He is desperately trying to get something else (as am I) but despite going to a few interviews not a lot is happening. We went to the job centre yesterday. I'm not entitled to JSA as I haven't paid national insurance for the last 2 years and they have told him to come back next week for their decision on how much he is entitled to. They told me to ring tax credits and they have told me that as OH has earnt £42K so far this tax year we aren't entitled to anything??? is this right??

Am so worried - surely we must be due something other than his JSA??

Tax credits decision is correct if that is his income this tax year. He should be able to get contribution based job seekers if not income based. You should be able to get income based job seekers but I don't know if you can both claim two different types. Also enquire about council tax benefit and housing benefit (this won't cover your mortgage payment but it will help towards the interest). Make any cut backs on food and utilities that you can.

This happened to us a few years ago and I still remember the utter fear and shock. Same set up as you, DH also only been in the new job six months but had gone self employed to work for a US firm who literally pulled the contract one pm and left us high and dry. He did get contributions based JSA and the kids then qualified for free school meals but that was it until I went back to work (as a TA, I'm a teacher but this suited better than supply teaching at the time) and then we qualified for tax credits (and still had child benefit as we hadn't opted out of receiving payments thankfully). Didn't qualify for anything else. What did help was getting the council tax switched to 12 months (it was this time of year) so the rest of the year's payments got spilt into four instead of two and then kicked in from the April.
Best advice was to be really strict with food shopping, menu plan and take a list. Before you go to the till, go back round the shop in reverse and put back anything that's crept in the trolley or you know you can do without for another week (like washing powder). Good luck, it will be hard but you'll get through it because you have to.

Claim for housing benefit and council tax relief- I doubt you’ll get any housing benefit but the council tax relief will be useful and the sooner you claim the sooner it kicks in - so go to district council website today and find out how to claim

Always pay your council tax before any bill, as ctx is the one you’ll go to prison for if you don’t pay and the council soon take you to court for non payment.

Ask at district council if you can have January payment spread out till March if needed.

You can't claim housing benefit if you have a mortgage, you would need to claim for SMI (support for motgage interest). You can't claim until you have been claiming JSA for 39 weeks and it is a loan so will need to be repaid.

Info can be found here: www.gov.uk/support-for-mortgage-interest

Ring your mortgage provider - if you can’t take a payment holiday which some firms offer you will be able to pay interest only for 6 months or so which will really help.

We did this earlier in the year when we ran into troubles. I asked for financial difficulty department and told them what was happening. They went through our income and expenditure and were so kind and helpful. It was sorted before the next payment was due.

You can also ring any credit card or loan companies and tell them what’s happening. Better they are aware and might offer a solution than missing payments.

What a crappy time of yeat for this to happen I’m sorry for you

The tax credits is correct. From April you would be able to claim , but maybe your dh will have another job by then hopefully. Can both of you try agencies, doing anything just to get some income coming in ? Sorry you are going through such a tough time.

Double check all credit cards/mortgage/loan etc havent got payment protection on them, sometimes its easy to forget policies.