Explanatory note

These regulations further amend the Supplementary Benefit (Conditions of Entitlement) Regulations 1981 in the following respects.

They insert a definition of“relevant enactment”by reference to the definition given to that term in the Supplementary Benefit (Single Payments) Regulations 1981 and a definition of“voluntary organisation”(regulation 2(2)).

They clarify that a person is only to be accepted as available for employment if he is available to be employed for at least 30 hours a week or if he is disabled the number of hours he could be expected to work, and that he is available if working for less than those number of hours and available for further employment to make up the balance (regulation 3).

They exempt from the provision treating a person as not being available for, employment and so ineligible for supplementary benefits, those aged 19 to 20 attending a course of education up to A level standard or equivalent whose circumstances are the same as a person under 19 in relevant education and who would be entitled to supplementary benefit in their own right and those in relevant education who are living away from their parents or anyone acting in their place where that person is financially unable to support them and is chronically sick, disabled, in prison or cannot enter or re-enter Great Britain (regulations 4, 5 and 6).

They treat a person who is entered for an external examination on the date he ceases full-time education as being in relevant education up to the date of his examination or last examination and they treat a person as being in relevant education for the period up to the terminal date after he attains compulsory school age (regulation 7).

They include among persons acting in the place of a young person’s parents a local authority or voluntary organisation where that young person is in their care or a person with whom he is boarded out by them and they make provision for a person in full-time education up to A level standard or equivalent to receive supplementary benefit where he is living away from his parents or any person acting in their place and they are unable financially to provide for him and are chronically sick, disabled, in prison or cannot enter or re-enter Great Britain, (regulation 8).

The report of the Social Security Advisory Committee dated the 17 December 1986 on the proposals to make these regulations together with the statement of the Secretary of State for Social Services setting out the extent to which these regulations reflect the recommendations of the Committee and, to the extent that they do not, the reasons why not, are published by Her Majesty’s Stationery Office as Command Paper No. 106.