Can I reopen an old claim?

Fiii

Hi there

Hoping someone can help.
I was let go from my full time job last June. I applied for and received Job Seekers Benefit for 2months before I was offered some work on a freelance basis. I signed off and I have gotten steady freelance work since then, but the work is drying up and it looks like I will have nothing on the books for a while (ie months).

Does anyone know if they can just reopen my previous claim, or do I have to go through the whole rigmarole of registering again?

(I know the obvious answer is to just go down and ask them, just looking to see if anyone has had to do anything similar before I have to go all the way out there.)

Cheers

F

tommy21

Fiii wrote: »

Hi there

Hoping someone can help.
I was let go from my full time job last June. I applied for and received Job Seekers Benefit for 2months before I was offered some work on a freelance basis. I signed off and I have gotten steady freelance work since then, but the work is drying up and it looks like I will have nothing on the books for a while (ie months).

Does anyone know if they can just reopen my previous claim, or do I have to go through the whole rigmarole of registering again?

(I know the obvious answer is to just go down and ask them, just looking to see if anyone has had to do anything similar before I have to go all the way out there.)

Cheers

F

Hi sorry to hear about the work drying up. The short answer is unfortunately you need to go down and apply again. I would suggest this time asking for casual job seekers benefit. This is what I am on. You fill out a slip each week marking the days you did and didn't work that week and then you drop it in once a week into a drop box (no need to sign on to queue anymore). You receive payment by cheque in the post.

Note if you work in excess of 3 days a week you will be removed from JSB (not including Sunday though so technically this would be a 4th day of work if you can be flexible that way). So for some weeks you might have no work and get full payment - other weeks you might work a 2 day week and you will lose 1/6th of your overall payment per day worked. So for instance at the moment I work one day a week and lose 1/6th of my payment as a result (but of course I gain much more from that one day's work financially and it begins to build up my credits again).

All this is dependent on you qualifying again for JSB in terms of credits and suffering a substantial loss of employment of course. Hope this helps and open to correction by other boardsies.:o

Fiii

Thanks for that tommy21, I thought as much.
Good call on the casual job seekers - that might suit me.

Now, heres hoping this go-slow lark won't effect my claim being processed :rolleyes: