Children staying in education after GCSEs? Tell the Child Benefit Office!
Are your children staying in education beyond 16 years? Then you must inform the Child Benefit Office every year. Child Benefit stops on 31 August after your child’s 16th birthday. Parents or carers can continue to receive child benefit If they continue within approved education or training, but you must tell the Child Benefit Office. You can notify them online, by post or phone 0300 200 3100. Find our more on the Government website www.gov.uk/child-benefit-16-19
Child benefit paid to your credit union account? Repay your loan via child benefit? Check you are receiving the correct amount by logging in to internet banking. We will contact you if there is insufficient funds to cover your loan repayment.
Customer counter open
Our customer counter is now open from 10am -1pm Monday to Friday, but do please use internet banking if possible so we can keep the counter free for new Members and those who are unable to use internet banking.
We have some new rules to ensure we are all complying with the Covid-19 restrictions:
- Only one person and/or household in the customer area at any one time
- We have new ‘please stand here’ spots outside for 2m distancing
- Customers must use the hand sanitiser provided at the counter
- Face coverings are required from Friday 24th July
You are welcome to use our free WiFi and leaflets are now mounted in the outside lobby area, so no need to wait in the queue unless you really need to.
CORONAVIRUS HELP AND SUPPORT
You may have concerns about how the Coronavirus/Covid-19 situation could affect you and your money. See this page for the resources available at this time.
Advance Credit Union is ‘business as usual’; your money is safe and share withdrawals, deposits, loan applications are continuing as normal. We are seeing an increase in emergency loan applications and we are dealing with these as quickly as we can. If you aren’t a Member with us you can apply for a loan online or join online.
Our customer counter will be open again each weekday from Tuesday 15th June from 10am – 1pm. However we would ask Members to contact us via internet banking if possible to reduce the burden on our customer counter. We strongly encouraging all our Members to activate internet banking so they can continue to manage their money easily.
Our phones are unchanged; 10am-3pm Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday, 10am-12noon Wednesdays.
There are a few things we can all do to keep everyone safe:
- Wash your hands regularly – see NHS guidance how to
- Avoid touching your face – see this BBC article to understand why
- Stay at home – see government guidance
- Do not come to our office unless absolutely necessary. There are better ways to contact us; online chat, internet banking and email.
- Our phones are very busy at the moment, if you can avoid phoning us that would help free up our phone line for those who really need it. Internet banking, Online chat and email are quicker, easier and helps us to deal with more Members.
- Use our internet banking for share withdrawals; it’s quick and easy.
- 80% of our Members already use our internet banking, if you need some help setting this up please see the instructions here, watch our video or send us a message and we’ll talk you through it.
- If you think that you may be struggling with loan repayments due to the Coronavirus situation then please let us know. We will be as helpful as we can.
- If you’re worried about your financial situation because of Coronavirus, please contact us and we will do what we can to help.