Part-time workers denied benefit

Many local authorities, which at one time paid ancillary staff for the whole of the year, including during the school holidays, have made cuts in recent years and now pay for term-time work only, with a fixed number of holidays. As a result workers can be without any pay for several weeks. In such circumstances it might have been thought that they would have been entitled to social security benefits, but according to the Court of Appeal, this is not the case. Two workers who took a claim have been told that they are entitled to neither Income Support nor the Jobseeker's Allowance when not working.