jobseekers

[janew]

can anyone help???having a total nightmare with jobseekers allowance. my husband was made redundant 6 weeks ago. i am ill health retired and receive a small pension. we have 2 children and i have recently started a full time college course. dwp told us 6 times we were getting income based. now they are saying its a mistake and its contribution based. this week we got a different letter saying its income based for 1 week at �73, then �60.50 .............i dont know if that is still income based or not??im so confused

[sara3]

if your husband has paid enough National Insurance contributions, it will be conts based. if he hasn't paid enough, or your needs are higher than standard rates, it will be Income Based. the letters from the Jobcentre should show a breakdown of the assessment and also state which type of benefit it is.

[janew]

there is an explanation for the income based week, but it doesnt state whether we have moved back into the contribution based js allowance or not.

[THECORBYLOON]

For Contributions Based Jobseeker�s Allowance [JSA(CB),] the current rate is �60.80 per week. For Income Based Jobseeker�s Allowance [(JSA(IB),] the rate for a couple is �94.95 (assuming one of yous is over 18)
If you have an income (such as yir wee pension,) the first �10 pw is ignored but anything above that is taken off the allowance.

It sounds like they may have awarded the JSA(IB) when they had the pension income details verified and that gave �73.

If you get any income for being a student, that may have wiped out the income-based part and all that is left is the �60.80 JSA(CB)

Best thing to do is �phone them up and ask them to explain it to you.