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 (see Chapter 15 for universal credit). Chapters 4, 6 and 7 outline the income-related ESA, HB and IS assessments step by step. This chapter explains how much weekly income counts in these assessments.

Step	Actions
Step 1	Add together the annual income from grants and loan. Add the annual amount of any student grants, ignoring any that are wholly disregarded (see here), to the annual amount of any student loan for maintenance.
Step 2	Apply annual disregards. From the total annual grants and loan, deduct any disregarded amounts for books and equipment, and for travel (see here).
Step 3	Divide income into a weekly amount. Divide the annual amount of grants and loan by the number of benefit weeks in the period over which your grants and loan are counted as income for benefit purposes (see here).
Step 4	Deduct any weekly disregard. If you have a student loan for maintenance, deduct £10 – this is the weekly disregard.
Step 5	Add other income to the weekly amount. Add together any other weekly income – eg, from discretionary funds (here), earnings (here), tariff income from capital (here), and benefits and tax credits (here). Ignore any amount that is disregarded. This total, added to the weekly grants and loan total at Step 4, is the amount of income used in the benefit assessment.

If you want to work out your 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 (note that the summer accommodation grant is paid as a lump sum and therefore counts as capital rather than income).