Q2A

Got an enquiry ........

My boyfriend has just moved out left me in £2000 of debt, he was paying the rent and i
paid everything else but i have just found out he missed it loads of times and was hiding
letters from housing now they are tryin to evict me. Im petrified. i am not claiming
anything.. am i entitled to anything? I have a two year old daughter who goes to full time
childcare (in case i get called into work) im contracted to 15 hours a week and get £320 a
month but often do overtime. My rent is £400 alone and council tax £100, thats not
includin everything else. im gettin more and more into debt and think im going to lose my
home! im desperate for money and considered escorting i need help!!!!!!!

This is our reply.......

Hello, thank you for your email.

We guess you must be frantic finding out about this debt, and perhaps upset at the ending
of your relationship too, worrying about how this may affect your daughter and how you are
going to cope. We hope we will be able to help you and point you in the right direction for
practical help. We are going to run through the things we think you need to think about,
the benefits that might be available to you, and where you can go for practical help. You've
done the right thing to contact us, we will go through some things you need to do, and ask
you some questions so that we can help some more.

Please try not to panic, no-one is going to want you to lose your home with your two year
old daughter to look after. The rent is clearly the main worry. Is it a council house that
you have, and is the tenancy in joint names? Have you been to see the housing
department or the social landlord or landlord and told them what has happened? The first
thing to do is try to make an arrangement with them to manage the arrears. We have got
some more advice about this further on.

You tell us you are working and that is probably a good thing. However, when we checked
out your benefits entitlements, working just 15 hours a week puts you below the working
hours required to claim working tax credit. But you said you do a lot of overtime. The
advice is that if you do regular overtime you can average this out and give this as your
hours of work, in agreement with your employer. Or perhaps they would be able to offer
you one extra contracted hour a week? Then you would be able to claim working tax
credit and child tax credit. There is a helpline for this: 0845 300 3900 and you need to ring
them to get a claim pack. There is a lot of clear advice on the direct.gov.uk website.
We ran the information you gave us through the Benefits Calculator, on the Preston City
Council web site. You've told us you work under 16 hours a week,and putting this and the
other information in it came up saying that you could be entitled to £92.31 a week in
Housing Benefit, and £23.01 a week in Council Tax Benefit. This would clearly be helpful.
We assume you are getting Child Benefit?

Who pays for the child care?

If there is other debt, as well as the rent you should gather together all the letters and
bills. Check whose name they are in and concentrate on the priority debts - rent and
council tax and utilities. We suggest you go to Welfare Rights in Preston, details below,
with all this info and they will help you to negotiate with different people and help you
make claims for what you could be entitled to.

Have you thought about claiming Child Support? If this is something you want to do
Welfare Rights can help you with this too.

The Welfare Rights InfoCentre is at the Town Hall Annexe, Birley Street, Preston
PR1 2QE. Open Monday - Friday 10am - 4pm. Phone number: 01772 906363. Email
address: welfarebenefits@preston.gov.uk

Also, they have a debt advice phone service: 01772 906838, email:
debtadvice@preston.gov.uk Open Monday - Thursday 8.30am - 4.45pm, and Friday
8.30am - 4.00pm.

We hope that you will be able to follow through these suggestions and that they prove
helpful. We are sure you will be able to sort out arrangements to deal with the arrears and
claim assistance so that you won't need to consider escorting!

Let us know how you get on, and please email us again if you want to, about this or
anything else.

Best wishes,

q2a

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