A service user organisation is moving toward paying its memebers on a service user council £20 per week. All the users claiming benefit under incapacity for work and have done so long term. Some of the users do some 'work' for another organisation on a very irregular basis (roughly every 6 months) for which they a payment.

I am clear that the regular work would satify the lower permitted work rule but when it comes to the irregular payment I am less clear. If they do this work then in some weeks their earnings would exceed £20 so they would not satisfy the lower permitted work limit and I understand that for the higher permitted work they would need to have a gap of 52weeks before doing it again.

I want to know with this irregular work would people think that the service user would breach the permitted work criteria and therefore be not incpable of work?

Any advice and thoughts gratefully accepted

Yes it would, on the face of it. You don't mention the amount that would be earned for the irregular work - is there also potential for this (combined with £20 permitted work lower limit) exceeding the £78 p/w threshold?

It's also worth remembering that for the permitted work higher limit there needs to be evidence that the work will improve the claimant's ability to undertake full-time work - something I think it would be difficult to establish if the work were only to be undertaken once every six month.

The irregular work would, I understand, not breach the £78 limit combined with the regular payments. However I agree the difficulty would be the work improving the ability to undertake full time work.

Don't forget income support not all claimants are on ICB some are on IS completely and IS top up and it will also potentially impact on Housing & council tax benefits.