Budgeting Loans

A Budgeting Loan is an interest free loan to help you and your family spread the cost of items other than regular expenses. If you or your partner have been getting Income Support or income based Jobseeker's Allowance for at least 4 weeks you may be eligible for a loan. Budgeting Loans have to be paid back to the Social Security Division of the Treasury.

What can I get a Budgeting Loan for?

The maximum amount of a Budgeting Loan you can have depends on the size of your family and whether you have any other Budgeting Loans or any overpayment of benefit that still have to be paid back. Please get in touch with us if you need to know the maximum amount of any Budgeting Loan you may be able to get.

When you cannot get a Budgeting Loan

• If you and your partner have savings of more than £1000 it will affect the amount of Budgeting Loan you can get.
  
  
• You cannot get a Budgeting Loan if you already owe us £500 or more.
  
  
• You cannot get a Budgeting Loan for expenses of less than £30 unless you are claiming for lost, stolen or destroyed cash.
  
  
• We cannot pay you a Budgeting Loan if either you or your partner has received a Budgeting Loan within the last 2 years.
  
  
• We can only pay a Budgeting Loan for lost, stolen or destroyed cash once in your lifetime disregarding any loan before 9 July 2013.

How we decide what we can pay you

An adjudication officer will look at your circumstances and decide the maximum amount of Budgeting Loan you can have, taking into account any money you still owe us from a previous loan or an overpayment of benefit.

How you pay back a loan

• We expect you to repay your loan by making payments of at least £12.50 per week
• If you are on benefit, we will recover this amount from your benefit payments
• If you are not on benefit, you must make separate arrangements to repay your loan (by standing order to us or by making cash or cheque payments at the Post Office)
• We will ask you to sign a loan agreement before we pay a loan to you, so that you are clear as to the terms on which the loan is made and how you must repay it