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Support for Mortgage Interest - I can’t find an appropriate area to post this, sorry!
Looking at SMI loan rules for colleagues…
This is from the DWP site https://www.gov.uk/support-for-mortgage-interest/eligibility:
“To be eligible for a Support for Mortgage Interest (SMI) loan, you usually need to be getting one of the following qualifying benefits:
Income Support
income-based Jobseeker’s Allowance (JSA)
income-related Employment and Support Allowance (ESA)
Universal Credit
Pension Credit
Contact the relevant office to check if you’re eligible for SMI”. Fair enough!
Later it says:
“If your income is too high to get a qualifying benefit
You might still be able to get SMI if you apply for one of the qualifying benefits but cannot get it because your income is too high. You’ll then be treated as getting the benefit you applied for.
You will not be treated as getting Universal Credit if you cannot get it because your income is too high.”
Can anyone explain what this means in practice, please? And surely you can’t apply for any means tested benefit other than UC & PC now?
Thanks
For those on legacy benefits you can get the loan even if you are not actually entitled to the benefit, as long as you would have been entitled to something if the weekly loan amount were added to their applicable amount/appropriate minimum guarantee.
However, for UC they do not allow this, and you have to actually be entitled to some UC to qualify for a loan.
You are right that no claims can be made for legacy benefits, but the rules can still apply to someone who is already entitled to a legacy benefit and whose income increases above the level of their applicable amount..
For those on legacy benefits you can get the loan even if you are not actually entitled to the benefit, as long as you would have been entitled to something if the weekly loan amount were added to their applicable amount/appropriate minimum guarantee.
However, for UC they do not allow this, and you have to actually be entitled to some UC to qualify for a loan.
You are right that no claims can be made for legacy benefits, but the rules can still apply to someone who is already entitled to a legacy benefit and whose income increases above the level of their applicable amount..
Thank you. That leads me to ask though, what happens with someone entitled to a legacy benefit with a SMI loan in managed migration to UC?
This shouldn’t affect anything, as they will simply continue to be entitled to the loan (and no new qualifying period has to be served).
I’m not sure what will happen though to someone who is not entitled to a legacy benefit, but is getting a loan because their income is less than their applicable amount plus the amount of the loan. They clearly won’t get migrated, as they are not actually entitled to a legacy benefit (unless they’re on tax credits), so I assume the loan will continue until the legacy benefits are formally abolished. From that point, their entitlement to a loan will end unless the government do something about it…