1. Working out your income
The way that student income is taken into account for income support (IS), income-based jobseeker’s allowance (JSA), income-related employment and support allowance (ESA) and housing benefit (HB) is essentially the same. Chapters 10, 12 and 13 outline the ESA, IS and HB assessments step by step. This chapter explains how much weekly income counts in these assessments.
Note: if you or your partner have reached pension age (pension age reached 66 in October 2020) and are not getting IS or income-based JSA, your student support is ignored as income for HB.
Step one | Add together the annual income from grants and loans. |
| Add together the annual amount of any student grants and/or loans for living costs, ignoring elements that are wholly disregarded. |
Step two | Apply annual disregards. |
| From the total annual grants and loans for living costs, deduct any disregarded amounts for books, equipment and travel. |
Step three | Divide income into a weekly amount. |
| Divide the annual amount of grants and loans for living costs by the number of benefit weeks in the period over which the grant and loan are counted as income for benefit purposes. |
Step four | Deduct any weekly disregard. |
| If you have a student loan for living costs, deduct £10 a week – this is the weekly disregard. |
Step five | Add other income to the weekly amount. |
| Add together any other weekly income – eg, from hardship funds ( here), earnings ( here), tariff income from capital ( here), and benefits and tax credits ( here) – ignoring any amount that is disregarded. This total, added to the weekly grant and loan total in Step four, is the amount of income used in the benefit assessment. |
If you want to work out benefit entitlement during the long vacation,
here explains when the long vacation starts and finishes for benefit purposes – ie, when your student loan or grant counts as nil income. You should then total on a weekly basis any other income you have over the vacation.