Single parent universal credit

[anonforpost]

My sister's parter just left her. They have a 2 year old child. She is SAHP and doesn't know how she is going to cope with the rent, food, bills, etc. I have used the entitled site to check if she can get any help. I've got the following numbers:

UC 579.49 monthly
Council tax support 111.97
Housing benefit 1100 monthly
Child benefit 94.47 monthly.

So it appears the rent and the council tax is almost fully covered. She will have 579.49 + 94.47 = 673.96 pounds for everything else. She said the electricity, gas, water and broadband is around 200 pounds leaving 473.96 pounds for food, travel, recreation, mobile phone, petrol, car insurance, MOT, etc. Does it seem right to you? Is it enough? It appears very low for two people. thanks in advance.

I don't know if it's the whole answer. Two other things to think about:

1. He can't just walk out, he has to pay child maintenance. Sooner the claim is in, the better; and
2. She will probably be entitled to some credit for childcare so that she can work and earn some money.

She will get more than my husband's 44hr per week monthly wage. So seems fine...

That's £1885.93 per month?
My full time wage is £1450 per month. The charity I work for would be able to provide your sister with fuel vouchers, food bank vouchers, free food deliveries.
I think she'll do just fine.

It does seem right but as a previous poster said, assuming her ex works she will get some maintenance on top which doesn’t effect UC. Does she know what he earns as there is a calculator on line which will tell her what she can expect?

Thanks for the replies. She doesn't know how much he earns but must be a good as he paid everything till last week and they had a good standard of living. The rent is very high but the house is a very very small terrace house with no garden in London. I am checking the child maintenance for her. On the phone now. She doesn't have any qualifications so she will have to get a minimum wage job I believe once her son goest to school.

Yes. But 1100 is rent.

It seems low because it is low.
If she were to get a job she could get help towards childcare. Then a certain amount is deducted from UC based on wages.
Council tax support isn't paid directly, its deducted off your council tax bill.

If I were to be unemployed with my 2 year old I would get £978 a month + Child benefit.
I work and get help towards childcare so my income is above £2400 (granted £700 of this is for childcare)

978 including rent?

@gfwantsmoney

That's why I struggled when my h left me, I earned £1300 a month and didn't qualify for a penny of benefits because my dd is 18, but she's autistic and couldn't work nor qualified for benefits. Actually h came good and supported me until I could get my income up

A significant part of most people’s income is housing costs. But somebody earning £50k a year doesn’t say that they actually only earn £30k because £20k of it goes on the rent/mortgage, do they?

£500 a month after all other bills for one adult and a toddler in a city where you don’t actually need to own a car and pay for petrol, which seems to be your friend’s main concern apart from food and a mobile phone, sounds like she’ll do just fine.

@gfwantsmoney yep, rent is £408 a month(housing association). Single person allowance is £334.91 and child allowance is £244.58.
Total £987.49.
Granted I would get a discount on council tax but would still have to pay towards that.

That seems high. My daughter gets around £1100

Probably because it is in London. A garage costs 1000 pcm

Just double checking she is renting not eg paying rent to her ex to cover the mortgage.
She can earn up to about £535 (? Double check) without it affecting her UC or the council tax support
She can rent a room and it doesn't count as income either.
Plus cms doesn't count as income but spousal maintenance would.

It is a private tenancy with both names on it. Not sure if the landlord would accept UC as form of payment. She is going to claim via CMS. She will have to wait as he has his own company and his accountant manage his income.

She said she used to spend 100 pw on groceries. That should probably come down to 50 pw for the two of them. Leaving like 200 for the rest. She thinks she can manage with that. Thanks everyone. Much less daunting for her.

Do she’ll receive £1,894 per month / £22,728 per year from the government and not work. Plus the child maintenance maintenance she’ll get from the father.

It doesn’t ‘seem low’ to me - when she isn’t working. Seems pretty generous to me of the hard working tax payer to fund her.

She’ll be subject probably to the benefit cap too. I am. I rang citizens advice and they gave me a detailed breakdown of what I could get.

£1885 a month is more than I got as a single parent & I was working when I left exh. I know things have gone up in that time but I would have been in luxury with the equivalent. After I had paid rent & bills I only had £50 a week to feed & clothe me & ds, I worked pt & got top ups from benefits, some months I had to skip some bills so I had enough money for things & if my parents hadn't helped out by buying ds shoes & things I don't know how I would have managed.

Housing benefit is included in UC and not separate except in a few exceptional circumstances. Have you checked the LHA for her area to see how much help towards her rent she would get?

The total here with your figures is 1885.93.

The benefit cap outside London is £1666 per month and inside London is £1915 so she would be benefit capped if she lives outside London.

For an accurate calculation use
Universal credits essentials website.

some of the benefits you mention are not available to new claims as they all fall under universal credit now.

you will need to know the Local housing allowance for 2 bed to get the amount they will pay towards rent.

www.uceplus.co.uk

UC is made up of elements.

Standard - for the unemployed adult of £343 a month.
Child - £290 a month
Rent - dependant on LHA Rates
Childcare - upto 85% childcare paid in arrears with a max payment of £646.35 for one child

If you rent private in, for example, Coventry then the most help you'll get for a 2 bedroom accommodation is £132.33 a week. (Multiply by 52 and divide by 12: £573.43 a month)

f your childcare is £1000 in April, you apply and you could get upto £646.35 back in May.

Some people see the high figures of UC and kneejerk reactions start before they realise that rent makes up a huge part of it.
Some may say it was designed this way to encourage other people to misunderstand and get mad at UC claimants... Would the Tories design things in such a way as to make people cross with each other?... Maybe..

Truth is, unless you live in a cheap Social Housing estate where the rent is £400 a month, like I do, then the Rent element of UC is always going to be high and artificially inflate UC total.

The rent element keeps a roof over people's heads. It's not money the UC claimant gets to spend on necessities, It goes to landlords to pay their mortgages.

What the UC claimant gets, and is expected to live on, is £343 a month + £290 for a child.

To pay:
Rent shortfall (LHA is rarely all of rent, if rent is £800 and LHA pay £573, the shortfall has to come from somewhere)
Gas
Electric
Food
Council tax
TV license
Insurance
Internet
Water
And so on and so on

This is why foodbank usage is approaching 3million and homelessness is a real concern for a lot of people.

Its also worth highlighting to some people that unemployment doesn't cost the economy that much in the grand scheme.

It's a media tactic to make people believe it does so that people get mad at Ms Bloggs raising her kid on a £1000 a month instead of focussing on MP TuggingPud who's claiming £180k in expenses, £90k in wages, £200k in rental income, £150k in consultancy fees etc.

Unemployment makes up 1-2% of welfare payments.
(For comparison, pensions make up over 40% of welfare.)

@AyeUpMeDuck that's an eye-opener. I had no idea it was such a small proportion.