Am I entitled to claim contribution based Job Seekers Allowance??

[madamant]

    I am currently out of work having just completed a university course and I need to claim Jobseekers Allowance until I am able to find suitable employment.

    And here is the problem. My wife works 8 hours a week but is paid �100. The job centre seems to think that as she works less that 16 hours, we have to make a joint claim, which will take her wages into account and leave us with not very much at all. Previous to my returning to uni, I was in a high paid I.T. job, so I cannot understand why we should make a joint claim when I have paid more than enough National Insurance contributions to apply for sole contribution based allowance.

    In short does anyone know whether I am entitled to claim contribution based JSA, as the Job Centre are making it all rather awkward. 

[goldenboy]

i work in the fresh claims section of a job centre and to be honest, our training is not exactly across the board. if you came to me at my place of work, i'd tell you that in order to claim conts jsa, you need to have been employed full time in the same job, continuously for the last 2 tax years. if this applys then apply for conts. conts jsa only lasts for 6 months and you cant apply for housing benefit but you dont have to declare savings on the jsa1 form or through the call back appt if done by the new system. i'll check tomorrow at work and give more info if i find i'm wrong in any regard.

[ursula62]

If you just want to claim the contribution based allowance you are free to do so. The job centre staff are trying to help you by telling you you're entitled to more.

contribution based JSA is based solely on your own NI contributions over the past 2 years. As long as you've been working - not necessarily for the same employer - and NI was deducted from your salary, you will be eligible.

As goldenboy says, it's only payable for 6 months - and when I was receiving it a few months ago, it was about �56 a week which isn't an awful lot.

[orientallady]

if you are married or with a partner you cannot claim like you are a single partner hence your wife/partner's earnings are taken into account as well.

[Bugsysiegel]

Hi. I made a joint claim a month ago and am still waiting for a decision to be made as to whether my partner and I will receive benefit. This has been dragging on for ages and each time I enquired they have told me that they are still processing the claim ie they need to speak to the job agency I worked for. Obviously the agency cant be bothered to send in/call with information on me as I only worked for them for 2 weeks. The last time I signed on the guy behind the desk had the cheek to tell me to chase the agency up even though I have no idea what the jobcentre requires from them!. Surely this is the JC's responsibility ?