Yes, you can use income from benefits.
Benefit income can be considered alongside your other income (pensions, investments, self-employed income, employment salary, etc).
Please keep in mind that your benefit income cannot make up more than half (50%) of your total income.
Here are two scenarios to show how this works:
If your annual income from employment is £20,000 and you also receive child benefits of £10,000 per year, we would consider your total income to be £30,000.
If your annual income from employment is £9,000 and you also receive child benefits of £10,000 per year, we would take £9,000 of your child benefit into consideration. This would give you a total income of £18,000 that we could consider for your mortgage application.
What kind of benefit income do you accept?
Universal credit
Working tax credit
Child maintenance
Child tax credit
Child benefit
Carers allowance
What about income from fostering, adoption or surrogacy?
Foster, adoption and surrogacy income is treated as normal income.
How is disability living allowance taken into account?
Disability living allowance or personal independence payments are considered on a case-by-case basis.