TFC09200 - Employed person: relevant earning threshold for a person who only works part of the year

Childcare Payments (Eligibility) Regulations 2015, regulation 9(4)(a)

Expected income must be earned from the period of 3 months beginning with the date of the declaration of eligibility. If a person only works part of the year, they will only be eligible for TFC when they are expecting to work and earn the minimum income requirement across the 3-month period following their declaration of eligibility, on average.

Example 1

Jim is a school dinner technician and is contracted to work 20 hours per week during term time. His income is averaged over the whole year by the Local Authority to provide a steady weekly income.

The average number of hours he works per week when calculated over 52 weeks are;

20 x 39 term weeks divided by 52 weeks in a year = 15 hours.

Jim is paid less than the average of 16 times the hourly wage per week normally required to be eligible for TFC. However, as a term time worker he is eligible for TFC at the beginning of each school term when he will be expecting to work and earn an average of 18 ½ hours per week at national minimum wage for 12 of the next 13 weeks.

Jim applies for TFC just before the beginning of term in April as his expected earnings for the next 3 months meet the minimum income requirement. However, he is not be able to reconfirm at the following declaration period as he is only working 5 of the next 13 weeks before the summer holidays and will therefore not meet the minimum income requirement. Jim reconfirms for TFC again when it gets closer to the beginning of the September term as he would be more likely to meet the minimum income level based on his expected level of work for the next 3 months during term time.

Example 2

Jennifer works at a caravan park on a part-time basis between April and October. As she expects to work 25 hours a week at the National Minimum wage, she applies for TFC in March. Jennifer’s expected earnings for the 3-month period following her declaration of eligibility mean she satisfies the minimum income requirement for an employed person. She can also continue to reconfirm for her TFC account in subsequent declaration periods if she is still employed and expects to receive the relevant earning threshold for the work done during the applicable 3-month period. She will not be able to reconfirm in December as she does not expect to earn the minimum in the coming three months at that time. If she has an unspent balance in her childcare account in December, she can still spend it on childcare, so long as there is a work reason behind the expenditure.