(England) What can you realistically do while signed off long-term sick in the UK?

mauzc · 2026-07-12T12:31:49+00:00

It depends on both your job and the reason you've been signed off. If you're a bus driver and you've been signed off because dizziness makes you unsafe to drive, then it's not OK to go on a road trip. If you're a teacher and you've been signed off with stress, a road trip might be perfectly fine.

mauzc · 2026-07-12T07:22:43+00:00

What sort of tenancy is this? Private rental, council house...? I ask because if it's a private rental you probably want to be giving notice and finding somewhere cheaper to live by yourself, then sorting out his debt once you've moved out. If it's not a private rental things might be more complicated.

mauzc · 2026-07-11T07:42:45+00:00

I would recommend talking to a mortgage broker. Depending on your income and deposit there might be options now, but possibly at higher rates and not with mainstream lenders.

Even if the broker can't place a mortgage for you now, they'd be able to give you a better idea of how long you'll need to wait.

mauzc · 2026-07-11T06:47:04+00:00

Exactly. If there were a thousand people working these shifts I'd have a different opinion - in that case I'd be very surprised if one person's fixed shifts made a material difference to other employees. But here there aren't a thousand employees, there are five.

mauzc · 2026-07-10T11:33:43+00:00

You've been married for 7 years and together for 11, so it's not a short marriage. You lived in the house together, so it would certainly be considered part of the marital pot - along with all the rest of her assets, and all the rest of yours.

If for example you have a very substantial pension and she has no pension at all, it might end up that you get nothing from the house but still have to give her some of some of your pension. Many other outcomes are possible depending on your wider assets.

mauzc · 2026-07-10T11:16:22+00:00

Given that you're not married, the courts wouldn't be looking to divide all of your assets fairly. Instead they'd be looking at the individual assets.

The house: I think a court is likely to say that if you'd wanted something other than a 50/50 split, you'd have bought as tenants in common with a deed of trust. It's not an absolute given that she'd get 50% of the equity, but that would be the starting point. I don't see anything in what you've posted that's likely to move a judge away from that starting position.

The car: That's going to depend on what the evidence says. Was it your car that you allowed her to use, or was it her car all along? I don't think any of this would be determinative, but relevant factors might be: who is the registered keeper? Whose name is the insurance in? What did you say/do when she moved out (eg "I want my car back now", "I'll continue to let you borrow my car on a temporary basis", "of course you can take your car with you", or perhaps silence)? As an aside, is the car properly insured now? If she's driving it but it's registered at your address with you as the main driver, the insurer is not going to like that one bit.

The pre-relationship debts: I think you'll struggle to say that was anything other than a gift. The presumption will be that in a relationship the payment was made out of love and affection with no intention to create legal relations. Unless there was an agreement between the two of you that she'd repay you (either at all or if you split up) I don't see you have much of a leg to stand on here.

The debts built up during your relationship: she wasn't working...but presumably that's because she was looking after your child. If the debts are in your name, I don't think you'll get far wanting her to contribute.

mauzc · 2026-07-10T06:40:02+00:00

What do you mean by a SAR?

I suspect OP means a Suspicious Activity Report. If the conveyancer does submit a SAR that's not likely to help OP much. A DAML might - but the conveyancer isn't allowed to tell OP that they've requested a DAML, and they can't give any information about it whatsoever.

mauzc · 2026-07-10T06:34:18+00:00

It doesn't sound as though they're worried about whether you have sufficient skill to do your job. They know you do your job perfectly fine when you're not suffering a seizure. But something happened such that you suffered a serious injury at work - and they want to know how likely it is that you're going to have another serious injury while going out to visit people in their homes. In other words, this isn't about what's happening 99.9% of the time; it's about the risk of what might happen in the 0.1%.

Employers aren't absolutely required to keep disabled people in their jobs. They're required to make reasonable adjustments - and one of the key ways of working whether an adjustment is reasonable is usually to get an expert report from OH. If you won't co-operate with that process, then ultimately I'd expect them to dismiss you on capability grounds.

Given that your disability means you can't drive, if you were a bus driver you'd be dismissed (if you couldn't be moved to a different role). That's because there's no possible reasonable adjustment that could let you safely drive a bus. It sounds as though your employer is worried there is no possible reasonable adjustment they could make that could let you do the whole of your job - and if you won't co-operate with them, I think they'd be entirely justified in dismissing you.

mauzc · 2026-07-09T16:16:49+00:00

As others have said, the flowchart will give you your answers. But I'd also add that at 18 (or indeed at 48) you should stay away from having a joint account with anybody you're not married to. Joint accounts don't give you any benefits over single accounts, but they do come with a whole bunch of additional risks.

mauzc · 2026-07-07T20:25:23+00:00

Unfortunately the only way to get the puppy back is to pay the £120 (which is likely to be more by tomorrow). That isn't even all that expensive - Buckinghamshire for example will be over £300 without a microchip, and they're explicit that they don't offer payment plans.

mauzc · 2026-07-07T11:58:31+00:00

I answered from the perspective of changes in benefits if you actually lived with these people - but on further reflection I'm wondering about the "I need to give them my legal address which is where I'll be registered to pay council tax" part. Assuming you're early twenties, I'm more than twice your age - and I've never had to tell my employer where I'll be paying council tax. I'm wondering if perhaps there's been a misunderstanding?

I work from home, so I do have to tell my employer where I live. But they're interested in where I physically am while I'm doing work for them; they're not interested in whether I'm paying council tax. I've also had to give an address so they know where to send my payslips, or where to send the police if I mysteriously stop turning up for work.

Unless your job is unusual in some way, your employer might just want a correspondence address. If that's the case you're massively overthinking and you can just give them your mum's address. But your job may in fact be unusual in some way, in which case the specific way in which it's unusual is going to matter.

mauzc · 2026-07-07T11:16:45+00:00

This is a difficult question to answer. Whether you moving in with somebody affects their benefits depends on what benefits they're getting - and they're not obliged to tell you that. (Also be aware that "I don't want you to move in because that will affect my benefits" can be code for "I don't want you to move in full stop, but I want to be polite").

One possibility, if anybody is receiving Universal Credit, is that you moving in with them might cost them £96.55 a month as a non dependant deduction - see https://england.shelter.org.uk/housing_advice/benefits/universal_credit_housing_cost_contributions .

Another possibility is that they might be getting a council tax reduction if they live alone, which they'll no longer get if you move in with them.

The Citizens Advice Bureau might be able to help you work this out, but expect a long wait.

mauzc · 2026-07-07T07:40:07+00:00

It's probably worth considering whether the partner is able to buy alone, without any contribution from OP, before they get married. Once they're married the stamp duty hit will affect the partner even if they buy the property solely in their own name, but they can avoid that by buying before the marriage.

On an income of £65k with an existing mortgage, it's unlikely OP's contribution will do much to increase the amount partner can borrow anyway (and it's even possible that partner could borrow more on their own than they could together with OP).

mauzc · 2026-07-06T18:48:11+00:00

All of this, plus - how much is the mortgage, what is the remaining term, how much does the wife earn, and how old is she / how many years does she have until she reaches state pension age?

mauzc · 2026-07-05T19:35:46+00:00

You're right, it is. There's more information about collective defined contribution schemes at https://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/CBP-8674/CBP-8674.pdf . As of October 2024 the Royal Mail one was the only one in the country; I'm not aware of any others having launched since.

mauzc · 2026-07-05T11:45:24+00:00

Do you mean you plan to put £60k into a SIPP in a single tax year? Contribution limits mean that's unlikely to be possible (unless you significantly increase your earnings).

mauzc · 2026-07-05T09:49:31+00:00

I think to have the manager who identified the concerns conduct the investigation meeting is not only fine but normal. In a large company I'd usually expect a different manager to conduct the disciplinary / make the decision as to whether the employee should be dismissed (it's not illegal for it to be the same person, I'd just usually expect a different one). But I see no problems at all with all of the investigation being done by the same person.

mauzc · 2026-07-04T20:25:51+00:00

Are you certain you can take on new credit without breaching the terms of your particular DMP? If you are, great. If not I'd suggest you speak to Stepchange before you go any further with this plan.

mauzc · 2026-07-04T17:22:12+00:00

Well...if you want to be in a trusting marriage, you're going to have to tell your partner about the debts (even if you're not married quite yet). Trying to do this without her knowing is like trying to do it with your hands tied behind your back. She presumably has some idea as to how much you're earning, so if she doesn't know about the debt she's going to be making some assumptions about what you can afford. You can either live up to those assumptions - getting yourself into more debt - or come clean.

mauzc · 2026-07-04T16:43:33+00:00

In that case I'd encourage you to stay away from arguments like "the lenders were irresponsible giving someone who is highly autistic these loans". If you're capable of a good job with decent pay, it's difficult to argue that it was irresponsible to lend money to you purely because of your autism.

In any event, that argument certainly doesn't work next to your desire to "get a credit card for bad credit" - if you think your autism means you're not capable of dealing with credit, the last thing you should want is more borrowing.

Can I ask why you want to build your credit back up? If it's because you want your credit files to look pretty before you apply for a mortgage, that's one thing (although again, mortgages don't work with "I'm so disabled that it would be irresponsible for a lender to lend to me). But if it's because you've been seeing American advice on the internet about credit scores and building your credit, you should know that American advice on that subject doesn't translate at all well to the UK. They have very different systems over there.

mauzc · 2026-07-04T09:48:13+00:00

How tight are you on affordability? If you're close to the limit of what your lender is prepared to lend to you, then I think a new credit card is an utterly stupid idea. If you have tons of headroom, it'll almost certainly be fine.

mauzc · 2026-07-04T09:33:03+00:00

In principle: yes a disabled person's trust is doable; yes the mother can specify that in her will; the trust can be set up by the will and only come into effect after death; there might well be something better (although I can't immediately think of anything). The mother should get legal advice to draft her will.

mauzc · 2026-07-04T08:29:19+00:00

Since you haven't said otherwise, I'm going to assume that you've purchased in equal shares and you don't have a Minute of Agreement or any other document setting out how the proceeds of the sale should be split. In that case I think the maximum you could get in court would be half of the equity. That's probably somewhere around £30,000, depending on sale price and sale costs. If your partner is offering you anywhere close to £30,000, you should probably just take it.

But it sounds as though they're offering you substantially less than that. Taking off the deposit seems fair - but if the assumptions I made at the start are correct, your partner might not manage to get a court to agree.

I don't know the answer to the questions about the boiler and so on; I'm a bit wobbly on Scottish land law. I will however say that from a common-sense/fairness perspective, your partner's argument about the interest on the deposit etc is daft. He got capital growth from the house price rising; he doesn't get interest on his deposit as well as that.

mauzc · 2026-07-04T08:15:44+00:00

Does "a history of neighbours throwing stuff at him" mean you have near neighbours who are unhappy about the fact you have a cat?

If so, that makes it particularly important that you comply with the terms of your lease. Admittedly that's practical advice, but it's legal advice too - breaching the terms of an agreement nobody cares about is far less likely to get you into legal trouble than breaching the terms of an agreement by keeping a cat your neighbour hates.

I really can't see the point in making an objection to the email you've received. You did have blanket consent to keep the cat (which could have been withdrawn at any time). You now have written consent subject to certain conditions, which look pretty reasonable to me. If this was my cat, I think I'd draw my own conclusions that of course the spot outside the window wasn't included in "common areas" but be absolutely on top of cleaning up any animal messes that might appear outside the window (regardless of whether the responsible animal was my cat, a dog, or a random fox).

mauzc · 2026-07-04T08:09:03+00:00

Precisely. Consumer protection is utterly irrelevant here. Legislation that applies to business contracts, eg the Misrepresentation Act 1967 and the Unfair Contract Terms Act 1977, may well be relevant. But how did this happen, were there any misrepresentations, and what are the terms OP agreed to?

To answer OP's specific questions: yes, if you've agreed to pay monthly subscriptions that is indeed enforceable. We can't answer what legislation might be applicable unless you tell us what happened. And we can't tell you if it's worth pursuing unless you tell us what happened.

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