Benefits help and entitlements

[laurenluke2017]

Hi everyone.

My query is this..

I am currently on maternity leave I earn £580.72 per month SMP. My partner is on contributionary JSA which is £73.10 per week. He has however got himself a part time job which is 13 hours per week. He will be paid £111 per week. We also receive Child Tax at the higher rate of £42.29 per week. We also get Housing benefit at £279 every 2 weeks.

Can someone tell me how this effects our entitlements? I know he can still claim JSA but will it be the same? Or different? Can someone help with what might change etc.

I am a money worrier you see. Any advice would be much appreciated.

Many thanks

Lauren

With JSA, I thought you only got paid the difference in earnings, so if you earn more than £73.10 a week then you won't receive any JSA? But someone might know more about it than me and come along and correct me. It can still be beneficial to claim it though when you're part time as they may still give you national insurance contributions if your employer doesn't pay this, and you may get some JSA money if there are any weeks you don't earn money in your job for any reason.

Have you used on of the online benefit calculators? Like entitled? That should give you an idea what you will get.

Silly autocorrect, its entitledto: www.entitledto.co.uk

Contributory JSA is not means-tested so it's not affected by other income or savings. If you work less than 16h/w you can continue to claim JSA. If he starts working 16 hours or more he will have to stop his JSA claim. He may be able to claim WTC.

The extra income will affect your CTC and HB so you should inform the tax credits office and council benefits team.

Sorry I've just looked it up and I was wrong, it looks like his JSA will stop as he's earning more than £73.10/week.

www.citizensadvice.org.uk/benefits/help-if-on-a-low-income/jobseekers-allowance-jsa/before-you-claim-jsa/check-if-you-can-get-jsa/

He'll lose his JSA entitlement. Housing benefit will be reduced by roughly £25 per week.

As whystay said, he should continue his JSA claim even though he won't get payments, as he will get NI credits.

@AnotherEmma how much is NI credits? Thank you

Unfortunately NI credits are just credits on your National Insurance record, you don't get any payments, but NI record is important as it qualifies you for various things including state pension.