# Moving to Bristol



## bennyhasahat (Mar 18, 2014)

Hey, how you all doing

Thinking of moving to Bristol this spring/summer as being made redundant. 
I live on a boat and plan to take that up to Bath and commute in and possibly move from it to somewhere in Bristol it's self if needs be.

Was hoping someone here could give me a little help with who to contact in Bristol before I move as I may have to rely on benfits at some point (I have worked 7 years inthis job and 3 in the one before which i was also made redundant from when the company moved to scotland... Not looking to stay on the benfits just know i probably will have to as redundacy will not be huge :/ )

Who should I contact? Job center in Bristol, Council, ect?
Sorry if this sounds a lot but I have never had to do this before and only have limited access to the Internet and thus my searchs haven't come up with much. 
Thank you for any/all help you can give and thanks for putting up with me 

Dave


----------



## xenon (Mar 19, 2014)

If you need to claim JSA and HB best way is to do  it online.
https://www.gov.uk/jobseekers-allowance/how-to-claim

Housing benefit is dealt with by the local authority but as following link says, if you state you need it whilst filling in the JSA form, your claim should get passed on. See below re council tax benefit though.
http://www.bristol.gov.uk/page/financial-help-and-benefits/making-benefits-claim

Good luck.


----------



## Puddy_Tat (Mar 19, 2014)

xenon said:


> If you need to claim JSA and HB best way is to do  it online.
> https://www.gov.uk/jobseekers-allowance/how-to-claim
> 
> Housing benefit is dealt with by the local authority but as following link says, if you state you need it whilst filling in the JSA form, your claim should get passed on. See below re council tax benefit though.
> ...



^ that.

although stating you want to claim housing benefit when signing on for JSA is just that - something will (eventually*) get passed by DWP to say "Mr X wants to claim housing benefit, he is getting JSA at this rate as from that date" - you will still need to provide proof of tenancy and such to the council.

It is generally quicker to bung a HB claim in to the council at the same time as you sign on, that way council can sort out all the tenancy related stuff while your JSA claim is being processed.

* - when I worked in housing benefits, which was some time ago, the (then) DSS wasn't always accurate in sending stuff to the right council - their computer apparently couldn't grasp that while postcode XX1 was mostly our borough, a handful of streets were actually in neighbouring borough, likewise we had a few streets in XX2 postcode which was mainly neighbouring borough.   And depending on who received them and what mood they were in, any such 'wrong' notifications were either binned, sent back to DSS with a nasty note, or sent direct to the right borough's HB people.    This may or may not have improved since.

And while I'd never really given it any thought (the borough i worked in did have a bit of canal, but maybe not the chunk of the borough i looked after) - it appears that you can claim HB if you live in a houseboat (which I assume is what you're saying).  More (from shelter) here.  Although you might have to argue about it as I expect they don't get all that many such claims.


----------



## wiskey (Mar 19, 2014)

fractionMan might be able to advise you about mooring round Bristol.


----------



## xenon (Mar 19, 2014)

Puddy_Tat said:


> ^ that.
> 
> although stating you want to claim housing benefit when signing on for JSA is just that - something will (eventually*) get passed by DWP to say "Mr X wants to claim housing benefit, he is getting JSA at this rate as from that date" - you will still need to provide proof of tenancy and such to the council.
> 
> ...




Allbeit I'd rather be in a position where I didn't need it, I have to say my recent experience of claiming HB in Bristol went very smoothly. Someone even rang me back to let me know when it had been sorted out.


----------



## bennyhasahat (Mar 20, 2014)

Thank you guys! and yeah Tat I do live on a hiuse boat. Do I have to notify anyone that I live on a boat before making a claim do you know? Currently all my mail goes to my old address and such you see so I've never needed to change anything paprr work wise..

Thank you all, this is the first chance I've had to get online since starting my account here and really sid think I'd have any replies yet


----------

