We are noticing that people coming form abroad are having to wait much longer for CTC and C.Ben, as a qualifying period. Please can you confirm if this is correct & why. For example a resident,originally from Eritrea but has lived in Sweden for 10 years before coming here. She has been told that she wont get CTC & Cben until July, will they pay IS for her daughter whilst she is waiting for the other benefits to come through?

Re CTC, your client can claim an immediate payment for Tax Credits in person at a Tax Office as the delay is causing hardship. It can be a pain in that the immediate payments should get taken off the award when it goes into regular payment but sometimes that doesn't happen and then there's lots of fun sorting that out.

Re CHB, interim payments are possible too.

I've only ever used the Tax Credit Route and found it easy to get an immediate payment in my experience. It's just the mess it causes afterwards. Check first with CTCs that the claim is received and on the system for the appropriate length of time (10 days).

Good Luck