Hi guys,

Help!!! I have a case which is really bugging me and I am hoping you can shed some light??

Client is a single parent, currently in receipt of IS, CTC, ChB and Mortgage Interest Payments. She has been offered a job (temporary) to start as a lecturer in college and is keen to take it.

My problem is this. Client is only paid during term time and will not receive any payments during the holidays. Her worry is about paying her mortgage when she is not being paid.

WTC have told her that they can pay her WTC when she is not working under "term-time" worker rules, meaning that they would take her earnings over a yearly period and pay her based on that. However, this does not offer the safeguard of housing costs that IS does.

She has also been told by JC+ that she can move between benefits, ie claim WTC during the period she works and IS for the holidays!!!!!!

Can client claim IS AND WTC during the time she is on holiday so that the Mortgage Interest Payments are covered for these periods!!!!

This can be potentially quite simple or potentially quite complicated depending on the answer to the following question.

Are her weekly hours going to be the same or are they likely to fluctuate?

Hi

Her weekly hours are going to remain the same throughout the period she is working.

I lied when I said this could be potentially quite simple. The question of whether term time workers can claim IS/JSA can be horrendously complex. There is nothing in law to prevent a person claiming WTC also.

First, if a person has a contract of employment with an expectation of returning at the beginning of the next term and is in remunerative work then it is likely that they will be treated as in remunerative work during the vacations. Thus they will not be entitled to IS/JSA. The question is one of fact. That is, does the employment relationship still subsist throughout the period?

If you have a recognizable cycle of work then a weekly average is calculated over the length of the cycle. Here the rules are different for IS and JSA. For IS all the hours worked during the cycle are added together. That figure is then divided by the total of the number of weeks actually worked during the cycle (minus weeks of annual leave).

For JSA the figure is divided by the total number of weeks during the cycle including the weeks of the vacations (again minus weeks of annual leave). Thus for JSA this calculation is more likely to produce a weekly figure below 16 hours and thus a person would not be in remunerative work at all. So JSA may be the better option.

Where a person has just started work in a school/college on an indefinite contract then the DWP may be more likely to conclude that there is a recognizable cycle of work at the outset (this is inconsistent with the prevailing case law by the way) than if the person has a fixed term contract.