Housing benefit reduced from £60 per week to £2. CRAP!

[juicychops]

gotta now find the extra £250. will have to pay the whole rent, council tax, and all bills out of my poxy 16hr per week wage and tax credits.

such a dramatic drop. dont know how i will manage but im sure i will somehow. Decided ive got to give up my car as i wont be able to afford it.

so will be selling it in the next month and buying a bike to get me to work and back.

il have hardly nothing left at the end of the month to actually live on. Not quite sure how this will work

i did however work out that if i gave up work, my house and council tax would be paid for, and after bills i would be £200 better off!!

absolutely crazy.

its tempting to quite my job...

Sorry thought you were a full time student. In which case not disregarded for council tax.

How come the massive overpayment? Do you agree with it? Have you appealed?

What was the mistake? Very important regarding appealling

OP - the suggestion to go self-employed and take on 1-2 cleaning jobs might be worth considering. I should think many people would be happy to be flexible over the school holiday periods in return for you doing a good job the rest of the time.
We were paying our cleaner £30 for 3 hrs pw.

the overpayment - last assessment was July09. I gave in my pay slips etc as requested but it turns out they still ended up with a figure for my wage that was much lower than it should have been. Therefore huge overpayment. I also got a pay rise in Aug10 which i didn't notify them about - i know that part was my own fault - but due to this previous figure being too low, it has caused huge overpayments of housing benefit over the last 18 months. Been told that despite it being their fault its still government money i have that that i shouldn't have so gotta pay it all back. They actually said it was my fault for not noticing it myself on my paperwork they would have sent me. I NEVER understand any of the paperwork they send me!

You need to hot foot it to CAB. Appeal it in part. Admin error and you didn't realise. Worth a hour or so of your time.

Do you get single adult rebate on your council tax? Can you apply to uni hardship fund?

If you appeal certain decisions they have to suspend their decision while they review the appeal.

In other words, if you appeal it's possible it might buy you some time at the very least, and they won't put you onto the new £2 rate until they've reviewed it.

I don't know if this is the way it works for HB, but it's worth checking.

thanks for your advice.

going to try and get an appointment to see CAB tomorrow and ive also got a telephone meeting tomorrow with our employee advice program thing at work so hopefully that will be helpful too.

il let you know how it all goes

Good luck!