BBC news article, 11 Sep 2017: Citizens Advice calls for Universal Credit ‘pause’
A charity has called for a suspension in the expansion of a major benefit reform because it says families risk being pushed into a spiral of debt…
Citizens Advice analysed 52,075 cases that it had seen, and concluded that those on Universal Credit would, on average, appear to have fewer than £4 per month left to pay all their creditors after they had paid essential living costs.
This compared with £16.25 per month for people in receipt of the individual benefits under the old system.
A six-week wait for an initial payment, processing delays, and budgeting difficulties were suggested as the key causes of difficulty for those on Universal Credit, it said.
BBC news article, 15 Sep 2017: Universal Credit wait a key factor in rent arrears, says DWP report
A five-week wait for Universal Credit has been a major factor in pushing some claimants into rent arrears, the government’s own research has found.
Universal Credit merges six existing benefits into one and is being introduced gradually across the UK.
Citizens Advice has criticised the initial wait for payments, calling for a suspension in the roll-out.
But the government said monthly payments reflected the way many working people were paid.
Guardian news article, 17 Sep 2017: Universal credit a train wreck that must be stopped, Lib Dems say
Liberal Democrat work and pensions spokesman to call for next month’s rollout to be cancelled until overhaul takes place
Critics have said the new applicants are being forced into crisis by the six-week wait for funds, and that the new policy of paying housing payments directly to claimants rather than landlords is causing many to fall into rent arrears.
“The work allowance section for instance, where people on benefit who move into low-paid work keep enough of their benefit to ensure they earn more money in work than on benefit, has been slashed to the bone,” Lloyd will tell the Lib Dem conference in Bournemouth during an emergency debate on the policy.
““The taper where recipients keep a larger portion of their money before their benefit is cut has also been cut to ribbons. This has rendered the entire principle behind universal credit – to make work pay, something I and the Liberal Democrats passionately believe in – utterly worthless,” he will say. “Universal credit is no longer a beacon policy. It is a complete train wreck, and this government is responsible.”
Guardian article, 17 Sep 2017: Revealed: universal credit sends rent arrears soaring
The Observer can reveal a catalogue of concerns from landlords, councils and charities about universal credit, which have been handed to a parliamentary inquiry investigating the programme.
With the accelerated roll-out of the new system just weeks away, some warn that rent arrears among tenants receiving universal credit are running at three, four or even five times the level of those on the old system. Three councils whose tenants have already been moved on to universal credit said they had built up about £8m in rent arrears. Croydon, Hounslow and Southwark said that more than 2,500 tenants claiming it were now at risk of eviction.
Some food banks reported that marriages had broken down as a result of the extra pressures of waiting for payments, while some landlords are now choosing not to accept tenants on universal credit.
Figures obtained by the Observer under the Freedom of Information Act also show that half of all council tenants across 105 local authorities who receive the housing element of universal credit – which replaces housing benefit – are at least a month behind on their rent, with 30% two months behind.
Guardian article, 17 Sep 2017: The Observer view on the rollout of universal credit
It is a flawed and cruel system that should be stopped.
‘We will govern in the interests of ordinary working families”, pledged the latest Conservative manifesto, a line that will ring increasingly hollow in the next few years. By 2022, millions of families will find themselves thousands of pounds a year worse off: not as a result of sluggish wage growth or the rising cost of essentials, rather, as a direct result of this government’s decisions to cut financial support for low-income working parents while it delivers expensive tax cuts for more affluent families.
Mirror article, 7 Sep 2017: Universal Credit was supposed to help those out of work not force families to food banks
Until now, Universal Credit – which replaces benefits like tax credits and jobseekers allowance – has only affected some parts of the country. From next month, that rollout will accelerate into 50 new areas – despite the fact food bank use has doubled in every area in which it has been introduced so far.
Welfare secretary David Gauke last week told Parliament Universal Credit was “transforming lives” and “making work pay”. Yet one of its key ‘ideas’ is a six-week wait for the benefit with no money. Many households – like Jenny’s – simply go under.
They must wish they could have had some of the £16bn Universal Credit has cost so far to implement.
“It doesn’t make work pay,” Jenny, a single mother of three, says. “It’s better for me to give up being a supply teacher to become a teaching assistant because Universal Credit can’t cope with my changing hours.”
Seven years of Tory tampering with the welfare state has shredded the vital safety net which worked for so long, leaving it no longer fit for purpose
BBC news article, 15 Sep 2017: Tory MP Heidi Allen urges delay to universal credit
Guardian news article, 6 Aug 2017: MPs urge government to delay universal credit rollout
MPs’ letter calls for extension of universal credit to be postponed until next year to avoid people suffering Christmas hardship
David Gauke, the work and pensions secretary, has been urged by 30 Labour MPs, and the Green party MP Caroline Lucas, to delay the expansion of the new universal credit benefit system to stop their constituents suffering severe hardship over Christmas.
