Savings

[Kin Kenny]

How much can you have as savings before it affects Housing Benefit and Pension Credit Thanks

[ummmm]

£6,000

[carlton23]

I understand it to be £15,000

[ABerrant]

You can't usually get Housing Benefit if you have savings of over £16,000, unless you are getting the 'guarantee credit' of Pension Credit.

http://www.direct.gov...ow_income/DG_10018926

[Jemisa]

I think ummmm is right.carlton.

jem

[carlton23]

What if a person is getting disability pension besides a private pension and government retirement pension, which amounts to more than is being spent by said person, as he/she has no morgage or rent to pay? His /she`s bank account keeps rising each month to over the £6,000?

[wolf63]

Carlton - the income is disregarded for a period of time and it will then become part of the capital that the person holds. The length of time that it is disregarded for depends upon how often the income is payable.

[carlton23]

FTAO wolf63, If the money is withdrawn and kept in a safe at home, would the authorities want to know where it had gone all of a sudden? These questions are hypothetical of course and only to help others....of course!

[wolf63]

If you withdrew the money regularly in cash then it probably would not be traced. If you transferred it to another bank account it might get noticed at some stage.

I don't think it is really worth trying to defraud the benefit system - you may manage to get more benefit but you would always run the risk off being caught.

Is it worth it? Some people are just greedy and don't care if they get caught.

I am SO glad that I no longer work for DWP - it is a crazy and complicated system.

Susan

[Whoever]

It's quite possible that any responses you get here may soon be irrelevant as the Government's Spending Review announcements on October 20th and their plans to have a single universal benefit for everything will result in the criteria for eligability being changed, although my understanding is that these changes may not necessary come in until 2013.

[ummmm]

Anything over 15k and you're not entitled to anything. For every 1k over 6k your benefit gets reduced.