Education Maintenance Allowance (EMA)

[adamc6671]

Hi All

I'm posting this on behalf of my stepson, Dave, who is on a full time College course and in receipt of (or should be!) of £20 per week EMA.

It is now 4 weeks since he last recieved payment, and is now owed £80, which is a heck of a lot of money to him. His attendance has been 100%. The college made one mistake with the paperwork over a month ago, which Dave has since put right by filing the relevant form with the college.

The college say there is nothing else they can do, and we must talk to the EMA people direct. The EMA people say there is nothing they can do, and we must talk to the college direct!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!

This is totally typical of many other Government systems - CSA, Tax Credits etc - they are so full of beaurocracy that they simply don't work!

Does anyone have any experience of EMA problems such as this? If so, I'd be VERY grateful for any advice on sorting this seemingly endless circle of utter stupidity, so that Dave gets his money.

Many thanks - Adam.

[PriorityOne]

Hiya...

I had similar problems with my daughter's EMA recently and was told by EMA that her school (6th form) hadn't authorised the payments. They can only pay when they have received authority from the school/college that attendance has been 100%.

In our case, it was true.... and the school had stuffed up on one week and marked her down as "late" during the next. (She is never late ..... so I soon had that one changed!) Once these changes were forwarded to EMA, she received her backdated money without any problems...

If the college is saying that they have forwarded on attendance info. to EMA... I would ask for a copy of what exactly has been forwarded and go from there.

[adamc6671]

Many thanks for that - will get 'hard copy' from both sides (if thats possible!) then proceed to bang their heads together!

All the best - Adam