Benefit Advances and Temporary Additional Support
When money runs out before the week does, Work and Income has several kinds of help. They sound similar, they are applied for in similar ways, and one crucial thing separates them.
Some of it you pay back. Some of it you do not. Knowing which is which, before you ask, is worth more than almost any other piece of information on this subject.
The three things to remember
An advance is a loan, repaid out of your benefit. Temporary Additional Support is not a loan, and it is weekly. Ask about both, because you will not always be offered both.
The four kinds of help, sorted by whether you repay
| What it is | Repaid? | What it is for |
|---|---|---|
| Advance Payment of Benefit | Yes, from your benefit | An essential, immediate, one-off need |
| Recoverable Assistance Payment | Yes | The same, for people on low income not on a benefit |
| Special Needs Grant | Usually not, but sometimes | An essential immediate need, food being the common one |
| Temporary Additional Support | No | An ongoing weekly gap between essential costs and income |
Read the last row again, because it is the one people most often miss. Temporary Additional Support is a weekly payment for a continuing shortfall, and it is not a debt.
An advance is designed for a one-off need. A shortfall that returns every week is not a one-off need. Where an ongoing gap is met by repeated advances, each one adds a repayment that reduces next week's income, which widens the gap that prompted the advance. Temporary Additional Support exists precisely for that situation and does not have to be repaid at all.
How much Temporary Additional Support can be
It is capped at 30 percent of the net rate of your main benefit. Where you are not receiving a main benefit, the cap is 30 percent of the net rate of Jobseeker Support. Using an illustrative net benefit of $400.00 a week:
The actual amount depends on your essential costs and your income, not on the cap. The cap is a ceiling rather than an entitlement, and it exists to stop the calculation running away rather than to describe what most people receive.
Why the advance arithmetic goes wrong
Take three advances over some months totalling $900.00, repaid at $20.00 a week from the same illustrative $400.00 benefit.
Now the same period met by Temporary Additional Support instead, at a modest $60.00 a week for one 13 week grant.
An advance is the right tool for a genuine one-off: a car repair that gets you to work, a bond, a fridge that has died. It is fast, it is interest free, and it is far better than the alternatives people otherwise reach for. The point is narrower. Where the need repeats, an advance is the wrong instrument for it, and the right one is sitting alongside it unrequested.
Two rules that are worth money
The first concerns timing. Assistance can generally be granted from the date you first made contact, provided the application is completed within 20 working days of that date. So the phone call or the online start matters, even if you cannot finish it that day.
The second is reapplication. Temporary Additional Support runs for 13 weeks. It does not roll over. If the shortfall continues you have to apply again, and payments stop if you do not.
A 13 week grant that quietly ends is one of the most common ways a household's income drops without anything having changed. Nothing is done wrong and nobody is at fault. The clock simply runs out. Put the date in a calendar on the day the grant is approved, with a reminder two weeks before it, and reapply from the reminder rather than from the end.
If the answer is no
A decision can be reviewed, and asking for a review is a normal step rather than a complaint. You can ask for a review of decision, which goes first to a Benefits Review Committee and, if it remains unresolved, on to the Social Security Appeal Authority. There are time limits, so ask promptly.
Decisions turn on the figures held for your essential costs, and those figures are frequently out of date. Rent that has risen, a power bill that has changed, a new medical cost or a childcare arrangement that nobody has been told about will all change the calculation. Providing current figures often does more than an appeal does.
Community Law centres give free legal advice and will help with a review. MoneyTalks offers free budgeting support by phone, text or online and can often find entitlements that have gone unclaimed. A budgeting adviser can also attend a Work and Income appointment with you. None of these cost anything, and all of them see these decisions far more often than any individual will.
What this guide does not cover
Every figure above is an illustration built from stated assumptions rather than a current benefit rate, because rates change and your entitlement depends on your household, income, costs and circumstances. Special Needs Grants, Disability Allowance, Accommodation Supplement and hardship provisions each have their own tests not covered here. Check your own position with Work and Income. This is general information rather than advice on your circumstances.
Related guides and tools
- Emergency costs guide, for meeting an urgent bill when there is no buffer.
- Budgeting irregular income guide, for planning around income that moves week to week.
- Debt management guide, for dealing with what is already owed.
- Debt collection guide, for your rights if a debt has gone to collection.
Test Your Knowledge
Ten questions on hardship assistance and what has to be paid back.
Sources: Work and Income on Temporary Additional Support, which is paid for up to 13 weeks before reapplication and is capped at 30 percent of the net rate of the main benefit, or of Jobseeker Support where no main benefit is paid; Work and Income on advance payments of benefit, recoverable assistance payments and special needs grants; and the rule that assistance may be granted from the date of first contact where the application is completed within 20 working days. Rates and rules change, so check your own entitlement with Work and Income. This is general information rather than advice on your circumstances.
Related tools and guides
- Benefit entitlement estimator: what you may be entitled to at current MSD rates.
- Working for Families abatement calculator: how payments reduce as income rises.