NHS Low Income Scheme

Your weekly needs include a personal allowance, premiums, housing costs and Council Tax.

The personal allowance and premium amounts usually increase each April.

Personal allowance

Your personal allowance covers your (and your partner’s) day to day living expenses.

The amount of the personal allowance is defined in the law. It includes bills like those for water, fuel, and house insurance. We cannot include extra amounts for specific bills like, car or loan repayments. These are already included in your personal allowance.

Premiums

Premiums cover special needs you or your partner might have. For example, you get a premium if you or your partner are disabled or get a component with your New Style Employment and Support Allowance.

Housing costs

We include the actual housing costs that you and your partner are personally liable to pay. These include mortgage repayments and rent not covered by housing benefit or allowances. Housing costs do not include board or other money you pay to another member of your family.

Council Tax

We include the actual amount of Council Tax that you and your partner are personally liable to pay.

We work out your weekly income from the information and evidence you give us.

We work out your income based on your circumstances on the date we get your form. And any help you can get from the NHS Low Income Scheme will start from that date.

Income includes:

• earnings - after taking off tax, National Insurance contributions and half of any pension contributions
• social security benefits and state pensions
• work, private or superannuation pensions
• War Disablement Pension or War Widow’s Pension
• money from trust funds
• student grants, loans and any assessed parental contributions
• any other income you or your partner get

If you’re a student, we’ll assess your application based on the whole amount of student loan available to you. This includes any income related and non-income related parts, and any parental contribution.

We do this if you take out the full amount or minimum amount of student loan available, or do not take out a student loan. If you do not take out the whole amount of student loan available, we’ll ask you for evidence of how you’re paying your essential bills.

Earnings

If you're employed, you will need to include proof of your earnings with your HC1 application form:

• if you get paid weekly or fortnightly, you will need to provide your 5 most recent payslips
• if you get paid monthly or four-weekly, you will need to provide your 2 most recent payslips

If you cannot provide the payslips we need, you can complete the LIS82 proof of income form (PDF: 253KB) and send it with your application.

If you are self-employed, you'll need to send your profit and loss accounts for a period representing at least 6 months. The period they cover must end within 12 months of the date of your claim or, if you're claiming a refund, within 12 months of the date the charges were paid.

If you cannot send profit and loss accounts, you can send a trading account showing your business receipts and expenses for the period ending within 12 months before the date of the claim.

You'll also need to complete self-employment proof of income form LIS61 (PDF: 251KB) and send it with your application.

If the business has been trading for less than a year, or the trading pattern has recently changed, the assessment period will be adjusted to reflect this.

Students

If you're a student, you need to include evidence of all grants, bursaries and awards you get. Normally this will consist of an award notice showing how much money you get.

If you applied for a student loan, we need to see a copy of the financial assessment that was carried out, regardless of whether a loan was actually awarded.

The full amount of student loan available to you will be included as income in your assessment. This includes the income-assessed and the non-income assessed loan elements, regardless of whether an application was made for both elements, and any assessed contributions to the loan regardless of whether they are actually paid.

We will usually assess your application within 18 working days of receiving your form.

If you're entitled to help you will get one of the following:

• a certificate for full help with health costs (HC2), including free NHS prescriptions
• a certificate for partial help with health costs (HC3), which shows how much you have to pay towards your health costs

You should get your certificate within 4 weeks of applying. It will usually be valid for between 6 months and 5 years, depending on your circumstances.

Ask for a review

If you think your application has been assessed incorrectly, you can contact us on 0300 330 1343 and ask for your claim to be reviewed.

Find out about call charges

You can also send your request by:

Email: [email protected]

Write to us at:
Low Income Scheme
NHS Business Services Authority
Bridge House
152 Pilgrim Street
Newcastle upon Tyne
NE1 6SN

You will need to include:

• your certificate number
• your full name
• your date of birth
• your address, including postcode
• your telephone number
• a brief description of why you think your application was assessed incorrectly