Coming into force this October 2009 Statutory Instrument 2009 No. 2655 SOCIAL SECURITY The Social Security (Miscellaneous Amendments) (No. 4) Regulations 2009.

• ensure that expenses paid to 'service users' - those who are consulted by public authorities, including local authorities, as part of a statutory requirement, about the way their services are designed, delivered and monitored - are disregarded in the calculation of income;
• extend entitlement to income support to single parents who have a child placed with them prior to adopting;
• clarify that 'retainer payments' on a person leaving work, that are taken into account as income, include statutory guarantee payments and payments made where a person has been suspended on medical or maternity grounds;
• amend the employment and support allowance regulations so that a person can demonstrate good cause for failing to take part in a work-focused interview if their physical or mental condition made it 'impracticable' to attend, rather than, as now, them needing to demonstrate that it was 'impossible' for them to attend;
• align the employment and support allowance regulations with the income support and JSA regulations in order that a person can continue to be entitled to benefit during the first 26 weeks of a temporary absence from Great Britain when they travel abroad for medical treatment without them needing to have obtained permission from the Secretary of State before leaving the country;
• align the JSA regulations with the income support and employment and support allowance regulations in order that, where a claimant or partner lives in a care home, an Abbeyfield Home or an independent hospital (and whilst any payment made by someone else for some or all of the cost of maintaining them in that home should be treated as possessed by the claimant or partner), such payments can be disregarded only when made by a health authority or local authority; and  
• in relation to the one month time limit for correcting a defective claim, correct an anomaly within the pension credit and employment and support allowance regulations that currently means that the month is never reached when reminders are issued.

In addition, from April 2010, the new regulations provide for child maintenance payments to be fully disregarded in the calculation of income.