Flexible New Deal Self Employed

Submitted by Ricard on Tue, 19/05/2009 - 7:18pm
in

Hello Everyone,

I have a few questions about the Flexible new Deal Self Employed Scheme if
anyone can help:

Will the scheme work in a similar way to the New Deal Self Employed, where
a participant will be able to 'test trade' for 6 months whilst still retaining full benefits?

Will those benefits include any housing benefit or Mortgage Interest Payments?

Is this Scheme in Operation now?

Thanks in advance

Richard

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Submitted by Piscator (not verified) on Thu, 21/05/2009 - 11:12am.

Richard

How it will work will depend upon what Primes (and their Sub-contractors) put together but I think you can expect there to be variants on the current Awareness/ Stage 1 followed by Planning help. You can probably forget Test Trading.( It has been denied to many Lone Parents and IB Clients for years anyway, although Self-employment is a very important and successful option for many of them.)

There will be some real confidence issues for Clients (and Providers!)as there is a deal of difference between giving up benefit for a job with a wage/salary and relying on your business working instantly. (At least if someone has signed-off DWP/JCP cannot interfere with the support given to help them to 13 and 26 weeks.)

Prior to that we are told that Clients will be signing and "job-searching" whilst working on their Business Plans. They will of course also have had to do all the job-search activity with JCP before they get to FND - whether appropriate to them or not! I think you can expect increasing problems of "post-code lotteries" on County borders! And in some areas there will be monstrous difficulties (already happening)caused by the introduction of Business Links as first referral points for new signers!

Also, far from there being Test Trading, within FND the new Self-employment Credit will also not apply....... These are interesting times.