0 hour contract and HB

Client is working 16 to 20 hours weekly but with her employer she has a 0 hour contract. She gets regular payslips, earning £120 to £150 net per week.
CL’s HB claim has been turned down.
CL’s pay slips does not indicate her hours of work. CL is in rent arrears and threatend with homelessness.

You might want to create a thread on the HB page rather than DLA/PIP (or perhaps the admins can move it?)

Do you know why HB has been turned down?  Is it because the Council has calculated that the claimant’s average earnings are too high?  Or is it because they are not satisfied with the evidence?

From what you have said there is no reason why your client should not get at least some HB, unless she is a single person under 25 with a very low rent indeed.  Can you tell us:

- her family circumstances (age, partner, children)
- any other income she has besides earnings
- private, Council or HA tenant and how much rent she pays

Thank you Anorak, sorry for posting it on the wrong wall

CL’s HB was refused beacuse of having 0 hour job contract
CL is of EEA national and had been living in UK for the past 22 months
She failed HRT

hi - just say that, as you can see, have moved to the HB section,

cheers ros

Ah, I see,  so they have concluded that she is not in effective and genuine work.  The more regular the work is and the more hours she works, the better; and the longer she has been getting regular hours, the better.  So she needs to show evidence of regular hours over as long a period as possible.  If she hasn’t been working long, what did she do before this job?  Her history in the UK might also help if she had already become established as a worker before doing this job.

Just one obvious thing to rule out - is she Croatian?

And, does she have a child in school?

she has one child of 2 years
She has been working in UK all along,
Thanks

cl is hungerian

Have they concluded that it’s not effective and genuine JUST because it’s a zero hours contract?  Surely not.

sorry client just updated me with her history in UK.
She claimed JSA until July 2013, then she became full time student, then she started working PT from the 31/07/2013

client also receiving student loan £9500 yearly

It’s possible the Council is mistakenly putting all its eggs in one right to reside basket then.

Students need comprehensive sickness cover and they need to give a realistic assurance they will bhe self-suficient throughout their course.  Leaving aside the legal dispute about NHS care, the claimant probably ticks neither of those boxes and so does not have a ribght to reside in her capacity as a student.

Instead, and the Council might have overlooked this, she appears to be simply a worker who also studies.  Here it is important to remember that the primary focus with work is on factors inside the employment relationship: if this work is effective and genuine in itself, she is a worker irrespective of the fact that her primary activity is studying.

If she has had steady work paying £120 to £150 a week for 6 months I would say it’s effective and genuine

Thanks Anrok, very helpful
However, client started working only from last December and had only 6 weekly pay slips.

See Levin on genuine and effective work.  At para’14 of the decision it states:

“Furthermore, although Article 4 of Directive 68/36/EEC grants the right of residence to workers upon the mere production of the document on the basis of which they entered the territory and of a confirmation of engagement from the employer or a certificate of employment, it does not subject this right to any condition relating to the kind of employment or to the amount of income derived from it”.

http://curia.europa.eu/juris/showPdf.jsf?text=&docid=91213&pageIndex=0&doclang=EN&mode=lst&dir;=&occ=first&part=1&cid=160268

Cheers Nevip