Good afternoon,
I am a single mum with 2 children age 10 and 6 years old.
I am on Universal Credit (UC) and living in a supported accommodation.
I would appreciate if you can advise me with the specific amount of money that I can earn without disturbing my housing benefits.
UC is saying is £379 a month in this correct?
Or is it better for me to stay off work.
I get Child Benefit. We are all fit-and-well, so no DLA or PIP.
I am looking for forward to hearing from you.
Miriam.
Hello Miriam,
The answer to your question, the specific amount of money that I can earn without disturbing my housing benefit, is £2,364.29 per assessment period.
Here is why:
Right now:
Universal Credit thinks that each month you need:
£368.74 for yourself
£315.00 for child 1
£269.58 for child 2
£953.32
This is what you should be getting now, while you are not working.
BECAUSE you get Universal Credit, the council pays Maximum-Housing-Benefit to the supported accommodation landlord.
If you begin working:
You can earn up to £631 each month and this will have no effect on your Universal Credit.
This is called your Work Allowance.
If you earn more than this amount, Universal Credit makes an earnings deduction
The deduction is 55% of any surplus wages over your work allowance.
An example:
If you earned £1,631 in an assessment period:
- wage £1,631
- minus Work Allowance -£631
- surplus £1,000
- earnings deduction £550 (55% of surplus)
- Universal Credit £403.32 (£953.32 minus £550)
And BECAUSE you got Universal Credit the council would pay Maximum-Housing-Benefit to the supported accommodation landlord.
Here is the point:
The more you earn, the more they take off your Universal Credit – but so long as you still get just a penny of UC, you still get maximum HB from the council.
And for you, if you earn £2,634.29 per month, that’s exactly what your Universal Credit will be – just one single penny.
And BECAUSE you get Universal Credit the council will still pay maximum HB.
But beware:
If you earn more than £2,634.29 the Housing Benefit becomes an utter-disaster.
They reduce the HB enormously, leaving you having to pay a huge amount of rent.
Also beware the five-payday-assessment-periods:
If you earn £550 per week, paid weekly, most months you earn £2,200.
You still get a small amount of UC (£90.37) and BECAUSE you get the UC you still get the maximum HB.
But one-month-in-three you will have a five-payday-month. Your pay comes to £2,750 and so you don’t get any UC.
And the housing benefit becomes a disaster.
A similar thing happens with two-weekly and four-weekly wages