money paid to a JSA claimant by their uncle to cover shortfall in rent ...

I have a cl who has a £250.00 pm shortfall in the amount of rent they have to pay and actual HB they receive. Their uncle gives them this money on a monthly basis to enable them to pay their rent and i am trying to stablish whether these payments made by the uncle should be treated as income or capital ?
CPAG pages 907 and 964 seem to contradict each other in respect of whether these payments are income or capital so any clarification would be greatly appreciated.
Thankyou.

As I understand it (and your right income is not defined clearly) that income can be separated from capital if a payment of income;
- forms part of a series of payments, whether or not they are made regularly or,
- is made for a period of time
However capital is a lump sum, or if paid in instalments (of a total amount) each payment will be capital.

Could the payments be made direct to the landlord and bypass your client?

If these payments are made without any consideration in return, without any agreement and are purely voluntary (which they do sound like), then I agree they should be disregarded in full as voluntary payments.

With the various cuts in HB, we are going to see more of this sort of thing, so it’s even more important that LAs and DWP get it right.

Thank you for your replies, most helpful.

I’ve just found that not all of the £250.00 per month that cl receives from uncle is spent on rent, and that approximately £125.00 of this is used for other household costs, ie : electric, water rates, telephones, T.V licence etc, and from what your posts are saying these payments made by uncle should also be disregarded as income for benefit purposes.

I’ve advised cl to gather as much evidence as they can that demonstrates that all the money their uncle gives to them is spent on the above and the shortfall in rent, and then i feel from what your posts are saying the cl can argue the payments should be disregarded because they are charitable and the person giving them is not gaining anything by doing so.

Again, thank you for your replies and if there are any other thoughts ...

Take a look at para 15 of Schedule 7 to the JSA Regulations 1996 (SI 1996/207),