Benefit income

<aside> 📢 At least one owner should be in full time employment.

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Benefit Income (Excluding universal Credit) should be evidenced through:

Latest DWP Benefit Award Statement based for current tax year AND
Latest months bank statement

100% of benefit income received by customers is allowable except for housing allowance, which is currently paid as part of universal credit.

Child Benefit

Child benefit can only be used when it will continue for 5 years from the date of the mortgage application. This will be dependent on the age of the children at the date of application.

Universal Credit

When entering the total universal credit amount, you will need to ensure;

the housing allowance payment is not included
any income has been appropriately deducted (See the Universal Credit slip for full details)
that any child tax credits are only included if being received for the next 5 years

Required documents:

3 months Universal credit statements/summaries
Latest months statement

<aside> 🎹 Keying pro tip:

All forms of tax credits are now paid within the Universal Credits and can be found on the borrower's Universal Credit monthly statement. Be mindful not to duplicate the payments across the benefit income fields.

Where the applicant's benefits fluctuate from month to month, take an average over the last 3 months payments.

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