In summary, the Society calculates “Qualifying Income” by

• Adding most forms of income EXCEPT the following which we normally ignore
  • Between 30% to 50% of most disability benefits such as DLA, PIP, ADP or Attendance Allowance (and we can ignore up to 100% of these if you are disabled and have to pay significant amounts towards your own care and support)
  • The first £1,500 of any salary, wages or self-employed income a person has per annum.
  • Any interest or dividends you are paid from savings (instead we apply “tariff income”)
  • Adding a “tariff income" if you have savings above £6,000.  We treat you as having £100 annual income for each £500 of savings you have above £6,000.
  • Adding an assumed income if you are over pension age and have a personal or works pension which you have not started to draw an income from
  • Subtracting most net housing costs you have to pay.  This will include:
    • mortgage payments,
    • most housing related service or factoring charges
    • the net rent payable (after taking into account any Housing Benefit or Universal Credit payments you receive towards these)
    • Subtracting the net council tax costs you have to pay (again after taking into account any discounts, exemptions or Council Tax Reduction you receive towards these).

Please Note

We commonly find that people whose Pension Credit or ESA payments include the Severe Disability Premium have a Qualifying Income above the Society’s limits, so we are unable to support them UNLESS they have significant housing costs or high care costs.

Assessing Capital

In summary, the Society calculates “Qualifying Income” by

• Adding the amount you have in all your bank accounts.  This will include:
  • All current or savings accounts, ISAs, etc even if you have put that money aside for a particular purpose (such as paying for a funeral or supporting a family member)
  • If you have a joint account with someone, we will normally assume half the balance in the account is yours (unless some other split is more appropriate)

Having said this, we know that sometimes people may temporarily seem to have a lot of savings but need to use them for a specific purpose and we will take that into account (for example, after selling your house you may have seem a lot of savings, but you may be using them to buy another property in the near future)

• Adding the value of any property that you own (but we do NOT include the value of your home if you are living in it).  However, we know that some property can be hard to sell, for example croft land etc, so we will bear this in mind.
• Adding the value of any investments you may have.  This will include:
  • Stocks or shares that you may have.
  • Investment bonds in your name (unless there is no way they can be cashed in)
  • Premium Bonds

We DO NOT take into account the capital value of any pensions that you may have BUT these must be in a formal pension account (not in savings account which you think of as your pension).  Instead, we take into account the income / funds you draw from your pensions.  Note, if you are over pension age and have not started to draw an income from a pension, we will treat you as having tariff income from this.

Further Information

For more details of how the Society assesses someone’s income and savings and calculates “Qualifying Income”, please see here – Link to document on Guidance on the Admission of Beneficiaries

Please call us if you are unsure whether the Society will accept that your savings are below our limit as we do not want people to go to the time and effort of applying for support if they are unlikely to qualify.