The National Health Service (Travelling Expenses and Remission of Charges) (Wales) (Amendment) Regulations 2008

Explanatory Note

(This note is not part of the Regulations)

These Regulations amend the National Health Service (Travelling Expenses and Remission of Charges) (Wales) Regulations 2007 (“the principal Regulations”).

In calculating a person’s resources and requirements under the principal Regulations in order to establish whether a person can claim entitlement to the remission of NHS charges and the payment of NHS travelling expenses, a modified version of the Income Support (General) Regulations 1987 (“the Income Support Regulations”) is applied.

These Regulations modify Schedule 1 to the principal Regulations in the following ways:

1.  They provide that any additional loan, the eligibility for which is set out in the Student Support in Scotland Guide issued by the Student Awards Agency for Scotland, and which is paid under the Education (Student Loans) (Scotland) Regulations 2007, will be disregarded in the calculation of a student’s loan income. (Regulation 2(4)).

2.  They provide that in respect of a voluntary payment made to a student only £20 of that payment is to be disregarded in calculating that student’s income. The maximum amount of voluntary payments to a student that can be disregarded is £20 per week. (Regulation 2(5)).The principal Regulations already modify the meaning of “voluntary payment” to exclude certain payments made to students (see the entry for regulation 65 in Table A in Schedule 1 to the principal Regulations).

3.  They substitute a new entry for the modification of regulation 45 of the Income Support Regulations (capital limit) (Regulation 2(2)) and amend the entry for the modification of regulation 53 of the Income Support Regulations to increase the lower capital limit, which is used, in prescribed cases, for calculating entitlement to receive benefits under the NHS Low Income Scheme (Regulation 2(3)).