Help with working while on UC & PIP

Desperately need some advice but don’t know where to go to get it!

Brief history, I get UC & PIP and am carer to my partner, i want to sell electric guitars i make from parts as a hobby as a sideline, (essentially bolting bits together and giving them a coat of paint.) i have made a couple and sold them however i dont want to get caught out by the DWP so i want it to be legit!

This wont pay me much, maybe 3-4 grand a year if it goes really well!

I did approach the job centre via phone and was basically threatened with investigation for working and claiming so I hung up, as I hadn’t given my name and my number is with held I wasn’t too worried. I figured it might be just the wrong place to call as I’d had issues with bad treatment from this job centre on multiple occasions previously. Figured I’d leave it and call a different job centre (I’m equidistant between 3 so I figured one would help)

A few days later I got up the courage to call another job centre and amazingly got the same treatment! Told I had to come in as working and claiming was illegal and they are duty bound to investigate, when I said I hadn’t and wasn’t working I wanted to find out details about starting part time self employment while caring for my partner and on PIP (still hadn’t and wasn’t about to give my name) they said that unless I gave my name they couldn’t and wouldn’t help and would have to reassess my pip as I wanted to work, even though they had no idea why I claim pip (arthritis and mental health) so again I hung up. I’m fairly determined when not in public or around people I don’t know so a week later I rang the 3rd job centre who stated unless I gave my name and national insurance number they wouldn’t speak to me at all, I explained I had been threatened twice but they were not interested in that, just who I was and what benefits I claimed before they would give any answers to anything!

As I had been threatened with investigation twice I wasn’t about to risk a third time! Now I don’t know where to get advice!

Citizens advice tell me to go to the job centre, turn2us say the same even though I’ve explained the issues and everywhere I look I’m told go to the job centre!

This is the one place I dare not go! I’ve got nothing to hide but don’t want an investigation into me, (who would?) my mental health wouldn’t cope! Plus my partner who I’m carer to certainly couldn’t cope with an investigation!

I don’t know where to turn for advice and with all the scaremongering about people losing part of their benefits for selling their own possessions such as cars or watches or dare I say it guitars!

All I want to do is stay legit, sell something that’s saleable and that I enjoy doing as a hobby! but I just don’t know where to get the advice from!

This won’t be a regular income, nor full time but it will require a bit of advertising and using selling sites such as reverb and ebay who now report to HMRC who in turn report to the DWP!
Part of me wants to just give up but then again why the hell should I?

Where can I get advice on the pros and cons of doing this, if I would need to register as self employed to do so, how I would declare any profits I make etc etc.

I know this has turned into a long post so thankyou to anyone who takes the time to read! 🙏🏻

As a carer you will be in the UC No Work Related Activity Group. ( see Citizens Advice link below )This is important as it means you won't be asked to attend the Gateway Interview at the Jobcentre with a Work Coach { who questions you regarding what they call " gainful self employment "}. It also means you won't be affected by the Minimum Income Floor. So all you will have to do is report your profit to UC once a month. It is you not the work coach who works out the profit. There is a leaflet in the Jobcentre called a UCFS5a which explains how to calculate profit under the UC rules. Here is a link to a copy. Hope this helps !
www.housingsystems.co.uk/Portals/0/Docum...017-08-27-075642-640
www.citizensadvice.org.uk/benefits/unive...mmitment-what-group/

I’m afraid citizens advice just tell me to go to the job centre as they no longer give benefits advice!
As for advice on ‘continuing with this work’ I’m unsure what you mean? What work? I’m not working!
At present this is just a hobby! I’ve had a load of bits of guitars for years that i put together into working guitars! I had no intention of selling these until we needed oil money so I sold them! Since I sold them I’ve had several people ask me if I can build them one but I don’t want to do this and fall foul of it being classed as ‘work’.
I’m not ‘working’ but the fear of losing benefits is crippling!
A good friend who was out of work recently and in UC sold his car with the intention of buying a cheaper more affordable one but as he got £6k for it the DWP stopped his benefits so now he has no income at all except the money he got for said car! Consequently he can’t afford a car at all severely limiting his ability to get further employment! This situation terrifies me! So I really don’t understand what you mean by you can’t help until I’ve sorted the issue with the DWP! What issue?