End universal credit claim

LucyLou221

MY partner worked for a company that went bust. He would hear the week-few days before the day where he was going to be. Since 11th July he has not had any work. He was sent a short-time working letter in May for 4 weeks of lay off, he was told by his line manager that this was in place until 16th August, and work will recommence. It did not and he received a letter this last week about a meeting in September for insolvency. We did not tell uc about his short term working as I did not think we needed to as this was supposed to be short term and work was to recommence.

We had to reconfirm commitments, last week which we did but as the job was due to recommence nothing was changing.

I am worried that we will be penalised for this.

He has a self employed job and I am due to start employment in a week and we will need tax free childcare so need to come off uc. Is this straightforward?

poppy123456

You won't get into trouble for not telling them. The reason you had to agree to commiments would be if your earnings dropped below a certain amount.

There's some information here regarding tax free child care. For this you need to both expect to earn at least £2,379 each in the next 3 months. (over the age of 21)

https://www.gov.uk/tax-free-childcare

Are you also aware that you can claim child care through UC? Although you can't claim both.

https://www.gov.uk/guidance/universal-credit-childcare-costs

I'd advise you to get some expert advice before ending your UC claim to see which one is better for you.

LucyLou221

https://forum.scope.org.uk/discussion/comment/902886#Comment_902886

Thank you. It was all up in the air for over a month. And we couldn't say he finished a job when it wasn't official and he couldn't look for work as he had to be available to work for 4 weeks after shorttime working. It still isn't fully official as his old company is still active and putting through £0 on his tax account.

From September we will be recieving £4,000 per month after tax, so I don't think we will be entitled to universal credit in any form. Our childcare is £280 per month.

If I just asked to close the claim would they do it? And would they need any evidence of him being on short time working or will they see that his old company is still producing wages, even though its 0? I know we've done nothing wrong, but should we have told them when it first happened or now that it has?

Thanks

poppy123456

You can close your claim at anytime by logging into your journal, click "home" and scroll to the bottom of the list and click "request to close claim" then your claim will be closed.

It would still be worth putting your details into a benefits calculator to check if there is entitlement or not. Don't forget to put in the childcare details.

You can also just leave your UC claim open and after 6 months of your UC being reduced to zero your claim will just automatically end.

I really wouldn't worry about not reporting the changes because your UC entitlement is based on earnings received each month, if your partner received no earnings then that's fine and his employer didn't report anything to HMRC anyway.

LucyLou221

https://forum.scope.org.uk/discussion/comment/902913#Comment_902913

Thank you. I think my main worry was not telling them in July, but at that point his wages went to 0 but he's still not had a redundancy letter or anything official saying he hasn't got a job. His employer is still declaring 0 to HMRC every week. So technically still employed and has to be available to work at short notice.

The calculator says we will be better off using tax free childcare. I have clicked to end the claim, all the options didn't apply so I clicked other reason and it then wanted a written reason I did put I am starting a new job and am better off with tax free childcare.