Terms & Conditions

[walmslm]

A customer is claiming Housing benefits based on earnings and tax credits. She also pays child care which means the whole of her wages and the majority of her tax credits are disregarded.

The customer is then off work sick for a 2 week period. She states she receives no income / SSP at all from her employer for this period. She does not creceive I/S or Incapacity benefit either.

I understand a person can continue to be treated as employed for the child care disregard purposes for 28 weeks if they are in receipt of the above.

In this example when the wages were removed from the claim the child care disregard was also removed and the result was – nil entitlement for 2 weeks.

So working – the customer receives HB
Not working – the customer receives zero HB

This can not be correct ….. can it?

[Jayne-T]

I cannot see anyway that the childcare payments can be disregarded.

As an aside – how expensive are her childcare costs that mean that all wages and virtually all tax credits are disregarded? What does she actually live off if she is essentially using all her earnings and tax credits to pay her childcare costs?

[Carol Meredith]

Unfortuntely, because she is not getting any pay from any source as result of being sick then it does appear to be correct that she loses the disregard but it seems very unfair. Are you sure that there is no SSP to be paid? If the employer is just late paying it for example but she is going to receive SSP for the period of sickness, but receive it late, then it will be OK.
Surely she has some entitlement to SSP unless she failed to provide medical evidence perhaps.

Carol

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