The benefits trap

[Grace Johnson]

Does transferring to UC result in the expectation you can live on sod all (and pay the rent) for 5 weeks like a new claim does?

Yeah it will

Any change in information puts the claim on a temporary hold. On the old rules it would be sorted in a week or so. With the universal credit thing it could take a very long time.

Main thing is losing that transitional protection though. Any change to a claim loses that and you could potentially lose a small fortune because of that.

 

[stuff_it]

Can someone help me help a friend. She is a single mum who has housing association property and has not worked for 3 years. She is desperate to get back into work but if she works more than 16hrs per week, she will lose her HB and be worse off.

I have been doing some job searching with her but we cannot find any jobs that offer 16hrs or less per week. We've been looking at all the supermarkets/chain stored but they all want to rota staff 4 shifts on/four shifts off, which already puts her on a minimum of 24hrs/week.

She also wanted to do a childcare course but there is nothing funded so she could never afford to spend the initial outlay for the course, first aid cert, etc.

Any recommendations on how she could access funding for courses that lead to real employment or how to find a job where she can work shorter hours?

Has she considered self employment? There's plenty of stuff she could do if she's unskilled, e.g. cleaning or dog walking.

 

[nagapie]

Has she considered self employment? There's plenty of stuff she could do if she's unskilled, e.g. cleaning or dog walking.

Yes, she's doing bits and bobs now but it's not steady work and she isn't making quite enough.

 

[hattie]

Universal Credit is such a mess. I don't deal with it enough to have any useful current practical experience, but i have had some training recently (really good training, I trust what they say - I don't however trust DWP call handlers or claims processors to know what the current rules are!). The rules about this were changed recently I think as the gov has been forced to slow down migration onto UC

This page sums it up nicely as far as I can tell

Universal Credit triggers - Entitledto

Basically the way I understood it (but get advice - don't assume i understood correctly)

- if it's simply a change of circumstance for benefits you are already in receipt of and you aren't moving to a different local authority area, you can choose to stay on the old style benefits or choose to move to UC

- if you're needing to apply for a new benefit: due to a change of circs, or because you are moving to a new LA area then this will trigger a UC claim no choice

Once a new UC claim has been made you can't go back to your old benefits even if you could have stayed on them - this counts even if you are misadvised by DWP I think.

I think some of the dangers are
- you might be better or worse off on either benefit, so if there is a choice then an informed decision whether to apply or not is important

- that DWP staff might unwittingly not understand that a claimant may have the right to stay on the old benefit

- they might not make it clear to a claimant that they have a CHOICE in some situations

So it is REALLY important to get advice and back up from CAB or similar before making any changes