Universal Credit won't be paid in months with 5 weeks. (WTF?) AIBU to think no one realises

[raisinsarenottheonlyfruit]

If you get paid weekly, and there are 5 weeks in a month, in those months your pay will likely go over the Universal Credit limit and your UC will be stopped. You will have to go without that month and apply again.

WTF are they thinking?

Have they never heard of averages FFS? (That's how Tax Credits works). This is going to screw over so many people. It's ludricous.

The people claiming UC aren't any richer that month, they get the same amount of money as if it was paid in 12 monthly chunks.

This will happen to thousands of people every time there's a month with 5 weeks. (I guess they mean 5 Mondays?)

This is farcical.

There's 5 weeks in January, so if you get paid weekly that's you fucked for February.

April, July, October and December also have 5 Mondays.

This is utterly farcical and just plain callous.

Yellow you keep peddling the same point without acknowledging anything I've said.

I actually don't fundamentally disagree with the caps. Neither was I aware of the point another PP mentioned regarding MLMs and dubious Facebook businesses counting towards working hours, I don't disagree with changing that either.

But to completely stop any payment for 6 weeks, potentially multiple times a year (which was what this thread was started about) thus plunging people into arrears when they can't suddenly up their wages is inhumane. If I went in to work tomorrow and said "I need to up my contract to 35 hours a week" I'd be laughed out the door and that's before I take into account what the fuck I would do for childcare. I already pay for DS to be in after school club twice a week because the shifts work give me don't fit with school hours. I use my days off to study for a law degree which I work my arse off for. I'm not just sat around doing nothing.

Of course the government can control rent it just wouldn't be as popular as punishing the mythical hordes of jezza watching, luxury buying, multiple holidaying benefit cheats.

I actually don't believe raising NMW helps at all. As I said before, that money isn't coming out of company profit for most big businesses, nor is it being raised by slashing the CEO and the like's wages. As I again already demonstrated, where I worked it's being raised by redundancies of those on the bottom rung or forcing us to sign shit flexi contracts which reduce our hours and company benefits. If you don't sign over they've started to declare people in breach of contract and you're sacked. If you do, you lose dependency leave and have to be available to work any shifts given with minimal notice which is obviously not very feasibly for lone parent families with young children and no support. It's shit for me and others in a similar position but I can't say I blame the company - it makes good business sense.

I work 17 hours a week around my degree and my son. I used to work 24 hours but they slashed my tax credits to a point I couldn't afford my rent, council tax, food and heating on top of childcare. I was advised by the tax credit helping to reduce my hours because then I would be able to afford those 'luxuries'. I agree that that is abominable. It should pay to work but the reality is that it doesn't. I can't take overtime throughout the year on a whim when it comes up because the last time I did they decided that the change in hours meant they'd overpaid me by over 2.5k. I had earned nowhere near that amount extra from the overtime.

So I would welcome a new effective real time system that reflects your change in pay from overtime so that I could work more during holiday periods when uni is less demanding. I would welcome it paying to work as much as you possibly can (and 24 hours was the best I could manage as a single parent). For what it's worth, I was on a full time contract before my ex walked out and often picked up overtime to get to 40/45 hours a week. I am not work shy. I can't wait for my degree to make me qualified enough for the full time jobs available where I live. But I am practical. I know that those bills need paying. Neither can I magic a job out of thin air. Neither can I magic up the available hours there used to be in retail before the sector started struggling so much even if I could work them.

There is no magical solution and there will always be someone pissed off. But what is more reasonable - to design a fair system that stops true actual poverty where people like yourself are annoyed by the tiny minority of people (and please do go and look at the figures) who cheat the system but where, other than that, you are unaffected and everyone is fed; or keep you happy and send thousands upon thousands of families into a situation of poverty where they'll be unable to feed their families but you will feel justified?

People with young families who can't afford to work more than part time are temporary. Normally (and I accept it's not always the case but I'm on about the majority of the time) when they are in a position to do so and the hours are there they increase their hours. DS is 7, I can't leave him home alone in the evenings and, around here, childcare only exists up to 6pm. The non skilled jobs available are evening and weekend shift work, not school hours or weekdays. I would take a job tomorrow that let me work 9-5 Monday- Friday but those jobs don't exist around here unless you have a degree (hence why I'm doing one) or an inordinate amount of good luck.

And families like my own aside, listen to the posters on here about how many people with disabilities are being told that they are able to work when they clearly are not. I would imagine that should the plans go ahead as they currently are the suicide rate will skyrocket, children going into care will be massively on the rise, poverty figures will increase along with homelessness and crime. You will still find the benefit cheats you despise so heavily and at what cost?

Bingo! Someone has worked out one of the driving forces behind UC.
You didn't bother to find out what they were going without, did you. It'll probably be heating for me this year.

Gilead I was trying to point out that getting people not to claim for benefits they are entitled to is on the hidden agenda.

Slarti if Labour had shown more bloody compassion when they were in government then maybe we wouldn't have the tories right now.

If i get moved onto UC then I'll have to go without quite a lot, namely a roof over my head and possibly my DD.

and didnt bother claiming.

Apologies, failed*, I'm aspie, so miss things sometimes.

Ifailed please see above, and again, apologies!

Worth posting again I think...

petition.parliament.uk/petitions/200213

It's called eugenics. The sick, twisted darkness at the core of Tory social Darwinism.

This scares me I work 28hrs a week for just above min wage I take home £950 a month and after taking off rent, council tax and electric, gas I rely solely on tax credits for food and breakfast club. If they suddenly stopped my payments for 6 weeks I don't know what we would do. I have no one who could help and its a scary thought. I know I shouldn't have had children but I didn't know at the time my partner would turn out to be an abusive bastard who can just walk away and live his happy easy life. I'm so sick of people assuming everyone on benefits doesn't work and chose to be in the situation they are.

Did you lot know childcare payment decisions have to formally go to a decision maker.

They are not worked out on what you actually have to pay they are worked out by using a rather strange system that involves splitting what you pay (if the decision maker decrees it’s reasonable) by amount of days they think you work then taking that sample day and multiplying it during your assessment period by the days you work, which is never going to work very well if you do changeable shifts.

And in practise decision makers can refuse to refund payments if they think they are disproportionate to earned income.

Which face it is going to be most people on NMW with more than 1 kid.

I have seen claims where over 1000 a month is actually paid but only £60 is refunded via childcare element. In all cases childcare was essential in order to work

Childcare also has to be paid in full during the assessment period then refunded. Even if your childcare costs are say £1000 a month. You need a receipt before it is reimbursed.

The argument that you shouldn't have children if you can't afford them never fails to astound me. Yes, of course, it's totally wrong for people to have child after child with no way of providing for them. But the complete lack of grasp of the fact that people's situations can change, and through no fault of their own, is amazing.

Damn those mothers (because lets face it, it's always the mothers who get the blame) and then have the audacity to be made redundant/have a car accident/develop cancer/become disabled. Maybe we should just take their children off them and have them adopted. That will teach them to better their circumstances

Also under tax credits if one parent was disabled and in receipt of pip/dla you could claim childcare costs if only one parent worked.
Under UC you have to be in receipt of the equivalent to ESA. So people will have to go through a medical assessment for no extra money. The fact that they receive high rate pip and have their own carer, is not good enough to prove that childcare is needed for their dc whilist their partner is working.

Just to add a little bit of info - the real time earnings that are used from HMRC to calculate uc are based on the date the employer advises hmrc the earnings were paid not necessarily the date the earnings are actually paid.

This can mean earnings being taken into account in the wrong uc payment period if the employer is a bit late updating hmrc

If this doesn't lead to the end of the tories at the next election - nothing will.

I agree Joffrey- I'm not even sure it will be enough, I see a mixture of people in utter despair about the future and others rubbing their hands with glee that the feckless unemployed will suffer (Not on here, I mean in general around the internet).

How on earth is someone on NMW supposed to pay childcare costs upfront and then wait for someone to decide whether they're worthy of reimbursement? How long does that take- days? Weeks? As if working parents don't struggle enough.

Chasegirl - employers get fined if they don't advise HMRC on or before the date the earnings are paid of the actual date of payment (with a bit of leeway for workers who are paid cash on the day of a shift)

Alexander- it only needs to be 1 or 2 days difference to have an impact on a uc payment tho

No
Leeway for the claimants then.

This sounds more expensive in terms of staffing than tax credits?

Some people just lack the empathy and compassion

And we call those people Tories.

😂😂😂

That was my reaction to gluteus

why are we being punished when we contribute to society, i really fear for my family if we change to UC

MargaretMary - Why doesn't your DH find work around your hours? You work up to 66 pw, but theres over 100 more hours pw where your DH could work. You are not being punished.