so heres the thing – mother just made redundant from a job…she works 10 hours a week, and does 6 hours a week cleaning on the other….she was made redundant from the 10hours a week job…

will she be able to claim JSA? and still keep her 6 hours a week job?

also to add she has never paid national insurance nor taxe due to working under the amount hours in total or if she has its not every month and very very little…

if it helps husband gets about 16k a year but is retiring in the next year or so?

is she entitled to anything? shes never claimed the ‘dole’ nor any other benefits all her working life, and i can see her due to the reasons above not being able too 🙁

short answer
SHE CAN CLAIM BUT WONT GET ANYTHING
She has not paid any NI so wont get income based JSA
She cannot claim due to her husbands income without this – think they have changed rules to stop spouses claiming anyway wher either works even for income based JSA
If he was out of work YES she would get JSA
You can work and claim JSA. You can sign on and get no payments – bar NI contribution.

She should however make a claim as they will pay her NI for her – not sure if they back date it assuming she has not reached the 32 yrs of full NI contribution which guarantee full pension
You can e-mail me for more info
Did she get redundancy payment from previous job?
See also working tax credits but they are done by another agency

Go ask, it can’t hurt. Off-hand :

Who can get Jobseeker’s Allowance?
To get Jobseeker’s Allowance you must be:

•available for, capable of and actively seeking work
•aged 18 or over but below State Pension age
•working less than 16 hours per week on average
•in Great Britain

Though she will be penalised by how much she earns from the 6 hrs a week job she still does. As I say, go ask, it may not be worth the bother to sign on, but if it is. she has “earnt” it & is in a position where it would help her & her family, I’d say she should claim it.

EDIT: Junkyard – makes a valid point about the NI, but as the Direct Gov site says working less than 16 hrs, I assumed she may well be able to qualify, though I don’t know this for sure.

junkyard is mostly right.

it sounds like she won’t get any contribution based JSA cus she’s probably not paid enough NI. no harm in trying, just to check. Even if she does get some, i think they take her 6 hrs pw into account anyway (i’d need to check the rules when in work tomorrow)

they might be able to get a small amount of tax credits, but i think it would be very small. check on entitledto.com

Jobseekers Allowance

Benefits Adviser!

Hmm, it’s a bit too public to ask this, so maybe don’t actually reply, but have the answers in mind for research elsewhere.

Depending on their ages (and apologies if I’m way off 😉 ), it’d be worth them looking into Pension Credit. Details on the DirectGov website here.

Have in mind the equalisation of state pension age will impact on this – (basically anyone born ‘twixt 1950 and 1955 is transitioning to the equalised State Pension Age (SPA) of 65 so can’t claim Pension Credit until they get there – use the link on that page ^ to help with this).

The starting questions are:
How old is the lady in question … and when you say ‘husband’ and ‘retiring’, is that he’s ‘reached state-pension age retiring’, or just stopping work ‘retiring’?
He might be able to claim PC now, plus there might be extra State Pension he can claim for her / she can claim from his contributions (when he reaches his SPA). That’s more complex tho’ – but ask for a Pension Forecast now to help plan for that, (but if he’s within 3 months of his SPA he won’t be able to get a forecast).

One of your local voluntary sector providers will [probably] have a welfare-rights worker who can help them by looking at the whole household and advising from there, be that working tax credit / pension credit / preserving NI et cetera …

(Not relevant to this question, and maye a bit geeky, but NI conts aren’t actually paid ‘as such’ whilst on JSA/ESA, rather the period required to qualify for a full State Pension at State Pension Age is reduced by the period that is ‘protected’ by that relevant claim – but in a practical sense the effect is the same – as the NI conts are still ‘credited’).