Claiming JSA before starting to study

My client’s partner recently gave up a job citing a bad back and has now decided to start a full-time uni course in September. She has notified her benefits of this and they have all been stopped until she provides proof of how much student finance he will receive.

Are they supposed to do this given that he won’t officially be a student until September? Also, can they both claim JSA until he starts his course (they won’t be entitled to any JSA after he starts because his student finance willl cancel it out)? I guess he will be sanctioned for giving up a job (I don’t think a doctor signed him off), but she wasn’t claiming JSA previously because he was working.

Thanks a lot for that, Joanna, it is really helpful!

The bit about his student finance not counting towards the income-based JSA claim, is there a particular reg that states that, or is it a blanket provision which means the partner who is a f/t student doesn’t have to meet any of the JSA conditions (including any income/capital that they have)?

I read various pages in the CPAG book and thought it was just the job-seeking conditions that the full-time student was exempt from, not their income and capital,  but I must have got the wrong end of the stick.

I used the sum of the maximum student loan and maximum grant as his student income (£7952 per year). If all of this was counted in the JSA claim it would cancel out the JSA payments. Is it the grant or the loan that doesn’t count, or is it a proportion of each, for example?

I know there are lot of different student grants available, but I thought it might be more straightforward to decide how the government-provided loans/grants are treated for benefits, is that not the case?