Hello, I will be grateful for any helpful advice. I was late signing on at Job Centre twice in a row and got benefit taken away for four weeks. On both occasions I was late by just 5-6 minutes. The situation was, I had requested the advisor several times not to set the appointment for too early in the morning as I have to drop off my disabled daughter to nursery at 9:15 and am unable to make it to Job Centre (2 miles away) for, say, 9:30am. Still, they continued giving me early morning appointments. That made me come a few minutes late at times. Now, I was seen right away on the first occasion (and given a warning letter), then two weeks later I was told to return in the evening when I received another warning and was told that I would be reported to "decision makers". Today I received a letter stating that my benefit will be suspended for four weeks. Now, if it was only JSA affected, we could make it somehow. But we can't afford loosing Housing Benefit for a month (that's £1,000 in where we live). I also feel treated unfairly as my JCP advisor always appears to have lots of free time, both before and after my appointment - so, arguing that I was taking someone else's slot would be a lie. Still, she went for punishing me instead of showing a degree of flexibility. Now, has anyone been in a similar situation? What chances of getting their decision annulled do I stand if I appeal? Should I do anything else apart from appealing? Finally, would this affect Housing Benefit which in itself is a means-tested benefit (and we clearly got worse not better this month)? Thanks for any advice you might have. k.

Hi all, I'm facing a quandary. I'm currently registered as a postgraduate student, but I was recently bereaved and have decided to suspend my studies for a year. I'm self-funding so I would like to just give up my student status and claim jobseeker's allowance, and look for a job for this year to tide me over. However, if I do that I'm worried that as the only non-student in a house with three students, I would become liable (and not exempt) for the council tax bill for the whole property (this is certainly what would happen if I were employed and living with students). I'd like to assume that I would be exempt because I would be unemployed, but I have nightmare visions of my quarter of the council tax being exempt, but being liable for the remaining three quarters. (To give an idea about the property, each of the four of us pay £350 rent per month). I imagine that this amount of council tax would exceed my jobseeker's allowance and so I'd end up worse off than now if I started claiming. Can anyone help me on this? Many thanks