Benefits calculator: How to check if you are eligible for extra cost of living support | Personal Finance | Finance

With UK inflation now in the double-digits, many will want to know what support is available to them. After announcing a range of measures intended to help people during the cost of living crisis, the Treasury has launched a Financial Support and Benefits Checker Tool.

The new tool gives people an idea of what kind of benefits are available to them and what kind of support they can receive.

Asking 10 simple questions, the tool cross-checks 25 separate benefits and support offers to make sure people can see what support may be available to them.

The tool gives users an estimate of the possible benefits they could get and how much their benefit payments could be.

It also looks at how their benefits will be affected if they start work or increase hours and how their benefits will be affected if circumstances change.

Currently, the financial support and benefits tool does not include all the ways of support available for the cost of living from the government.

However, in the coming months it will be updated with more ways to get support during the crisis.

This includes support for free school meals, reduced travel costs and extra help for housing costs. The tool only requires a short questionnaire of up to 10 questions, and only a few personal details.

It needs accurate information on the amount of savings a person has, their and their partner’s income, existing benefits or pensions, financial outgoings (rent mortgage payments) and their council tax bill.

This should help people find out what support they may be eligible for that they may currently not be accessing and is part of the government’s drive to help people manage the increased cost of living.

However, to get the most accurate results, under 18s are not recommended to use the tool.

The tool is accessible for people to use on the Government’s official website, Gov.co.uk, under its cost of living page.

The Help for Households tool released by the Government helps people see what financial support is available to them during the cost of living crisis.

The Government has launched the Energy Bills Support Scheme which will give people a £400 non-repayable discount to eligible households to help with energy bills from October.

The £11.7billion scheme will help over 29 million households across Britain.

Anybody with a domestic electricity connection in Britain is eligible for the £400 discount and there is no need to apply for the discount, as energy suppliers will automatically deal with the discount.

Another measure announced this year was a change to the National Insurance threshold. It means employees who earn £36,600 or under will pay £330 a year less in National Insurance.

The change means taxpayers can now earn up to £12,570 tax-free.

It came after the National Insurance rate increased by 1.25 per cent in April, ahead of being separated into a Health and Social Care Levy next year.