Hi, my name is Flannel1967! we both have to send id and 4 months bank statements.

Flannel1967

hi, I claim UC and my wife is my carer. We have been told in our Journals that we both have to send id and 4 months bank statements. We have a main joint account and both have a personal account each. My wife does 3 hours a day for 3 three days a week cleaning for people and has her money sent to her personal account so she knows where she is with it. But she hasn’t been declaring it because she thought she could work 16 hours a week without saying anything, but now we’ve been told that isn’t the case and she should have declared it. Now she is worried sick that we are going to be in trouble. I’m unable to work through Ill health. I use my personal account for my Zilch account in which I use for buying stuff from Amazon and the lottery etc. I also had some tax back which I put into my personal account and been told recently that I should have declared that as it is deemed as income. We are both nearly 60 years old and claiming benefits is all new to us as we have both worked all of our lives and we are a bit naive. So we are going to send everything including our personal account statements and see what happens. Just wondering if anyone would know what could happen please.

Flannel1967

Thank you for the reply. We will try not to worry.

Albus_Scope

Hey @Flannel1967 and welcome to the community. 😊

I see Vikki66 has already answered your question, but I just wanted to pop in and say hi. Please try not to worry too much, the DWP seems to be doing a lot of these checks recently, so you've not been targeted for any reason, they just want to check you're receiving the right benefits correctly and that you're real humans.

Flannel1967

hi, thank you for the reassurance. Just worried they will stop our money because of our naivety.

chiarieds

Hi @Flannel1967 - & welcome to the community from me also.

It's with ESA that you can only work up to 16 hours a week (& earn no more than £183.50 per week after deductions) before such a benefit is affected.

With Carer's Allowance, the person caring can earn up to £151 per week after deductions, but, if you're wife's claiming the Carer's element with UC, there's no limit upon the hours she can work. However, if it's the Carer's element, this is a part/element of UC, which is means-tested, so yes, you both need to declare all income.

Please don't worry, benefits can be confusing at the best of times, & you won't have been the first that inadvertently made a mistake. You're now doing everything possible to comply by sending in all relevant bank details, & tho there may be an overpayment, you'll not be in any trouble.

Flannel1967

thank you for that much appreciated.👍