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.

Just appalled by all of this. And angered beyond measure to hear Iain Duncan Smith insisting chancellor must find millions and millions for the possibility of no deal in 'the project'. The vanity project built on a heap of lies and empty promises, that if not stopped will give them economic justification for punishing austerity to complement their moral and political arguments. How did we get here?

At present if a woman being abused leaves and goes to woman’s aid

Then woman’s aid go and claim HB etc for her

What will happen with UC?

evolvepolitics.com/man-dies-hungry-and-in-fear-after-waiting-weeks-for-first-universal-credit-payment/

Foof, you'll still be able to continue with your degree: www.entitledto.co.uk/help/Student-income-Universal-Credit

I am currently in receipt of UC. My DH and I both work (low incomes) and have 4 DSs. UC hasn’t been awful if I’m honest but it can definitely improve. We didn’t go 6 weeks without money as they gave us an advanced payment, the downside to that is the short period of time they make you pay in back in, this means they were taking over £150 of money that would have been paid to us to pay it back. It should have been over a longer period of time meaning lower payments really. If my wage is lower one month due to me not being able to work (school holidays/illness/no shifts available) UC tops up money the following month accordingly. Tax credits refused to help us when we first made a claim with them a few years ago and we went for at least 4 weeks without getting a penny. I had to resort to doorstep lenders and got in debt and I find them really difficult to deal with which is obviously just my personal opinion. We do dread it when it works out that there have been 5 paydays in a month for my DH as like other have said it means a heavily reduced payment the following month but this has taught us to manage money better. I am well aware that others aren’t as lucky and I think I would struggle to do this alone. I couldn’t believe the extent of the failings when I had been reading and listening to all the reports the last couple of weeks. I feel so sorry for all the people that have had such a bad time and struggled so much with a system that is meant to help.
My question is what will the do if they pause the roll out? Will our claim be stopped, will it carry on but the roll out will be stopped?

Glitter if I understand correctly, Foof isn't saying she'll not be entitled to her unni place.

She's saying her childcare will change from one where she gets the money awarded uppfront (if student finance still do that, I forget?) or weekly from tax credits, a set amount averaged out - to having instead to pay it up front and then claim it back, at the same time as having to wait at least 6 weeks for her claim to go through.

She's saying she may lose her childcare place (I think, at least!)

The knock on effect of that for many student parents could be loss of their uni place I would imagine, if they can't go to lectures because no childcare.

@GlitterGlue thanks for that link. I’d not seen it before.
I’m concerned particularly because of the summer gap between end of May and beginning of September in which I am currently entitled to claim is, or jsa as dc will turn 5 in that period.

Foof, you used to be able to get some help with up front childcare costs when going into work. Google suggests you can still get this on universal credit.

Helena that article is awful .

For those who haven't opened the link:

Shortly before his death Mr Gold conducted an interview with ITV in which he said:

"I feel like I’ve been hung out to dry and not eating and that – it just makes you feel ill all the time. Yeah I want to keep the house because I’ve worked hard for thirty eight years but it just seems unfair that I’ve worked all my life to buy a house and now I’m going to end up with nothing."

Chris also said that he was initially declared fit for work despite a stroke in 2015 that left him with serious health problems.

After his death, Mr Gold’s sister was scathing about her brother’s despicable treatment, telling ITV West Country:

"He knew that he was going to lose everything. His house, where he brought the girls up. He knew."

"He couldn’t go to work – he was ill. Just looking at him he looked like a ghost on legs. He was so pale, no fat on him."

Heather said that her brother was extremely hopeful of receiving his first Universal Credit payment just days before his death, but it never arrived.

Time in uni should not be a problem I am guessing as I assume the systems of childcare funding etc will stay responsibility of funding boards. It’s also the waiting each time without money when circumstances change, summer break/starting again.

I simply don’t have enough in to create much savings to bolster the minimum 6 weeks period each time of no money

I missed the first line:

A man has died ‘hungry and in fear’ after being made to wait weeks for his Universal Credit payment to go through.

evolvepolitics.com/man-dies-hungry-and-in-fear-after-waiting-weeks-for-first-universal-credit-payment/

Yellow, kathartic, mrsstrat and others who think similarly THIS is what you are supporting shame on you

That's not an easy one, foof. I found this which it says was written for Scotland, but uc bit should be the same. www.cpag.org.uk/sites/default/files/CPAG-scot-factsheet-students-UC%28May17%29.pdf

I’m a CAB volunteer in a full service UC area. The particular things I have noticed-

• large increase debt especially rent arrears. Private landlords are even more reluctant to rent to UC claimants. We are issuing more food vouchers for local food banks.

• people who have just been through assessments for fitness to work and now accepted that they can’t work for ESA being reassessed when move to UC for unrelated reason such as a house move. This is incredibly stressful, especially for those with poor mental health (sometimes they had to go to appeal to get the ESA)

• variation in the way claimants are treated for example under ESA there is a premium if the adult claimant gets a disability benefit. This doesn’t exist in a new UC claim even if they agree claimant can’t work. If a claimant on ESA has to apply due for UC moving house/other reason not connected to illness sometimes a disability premium is sometimes included (transitional protection) but sometimes not - that’s

• lots of people struggle to use computers or with getting access

• claimants have to do things on the online journal. It makes it very difficult for us to help more vulnerable clients because we can’t phone anyone just help them add a note and see if they come back. One of my hopes (not expectations) is at least having an intermediary phone line so that advice agencies can ring on a vulnerable client’s behalf. We had this for tax credits at one point (each office had a specific code and we had to give a name so HMRC knew it was not given to clients ).

a stray “that’s” appeared! I’m on my phone and definitely not good typing on it.

Totalwingingit

If they halt the roll out to adjust issues

Then it will not be rolled out in areas of the country that aren’t yet using UC but will continue in those areas that are using it

But as yet it’snt decided

I live in an area that it is only used for single people without dependants, so is a mixture

Sorry if someone has already linked it, & I know there was a 38 degrees petition linked at the beginning of the thread (which I've also signed), but I spotted the below petition on the .gov site. Please sign & share on FB etc if you can.

petition.parliament.uk/petitions/200213

TotallyWinging if you continue to be entitled to UC you will stay on it. If it stops and you make a new claim within 6 months that can be UC. At the moment if the gap is longer than 6 months you would claim the old benefits because you have more than 2 children.

www.gov.uk/universal-credit/eligibility

Meanwhile social rents are set to rise.

speyejoe2.wordpress.com/2017/10/24/social-housing-is-unaffordable/

I've just re-skimmed the thread and found a few things of interest.

It's also important to point out that the point of this thread is that if there is a five week month you are removed from the system. You then have to reapply invoking not only a six week wait but a week in which you receive no money at all

People who re-apply within six months do not have to skip a week. Not only that, according to a poster, there is no six week wait either.

Not quite. If your 5 weeks pay takes you over the limit for UC you'll need to reapply (for lots of people they'll still get some UC in a 5 week month so their claim won't close) but it's not like reapplying from scratch. You don't have the waiting period and you keep the same monthly assessment period as you had before. You just need to log in and confirm your details. Info here.

So after a five week month, the only hassle is a few minutes spent on the internet? Oh, and you get less money, but an extra pay-cheque, so possibly your overall income is not that different from any other month? Actually I wish someone with experience of this would post exact figures so we can see what difference it makes.

As I understand it, if you earn over the threshold one month your claim is not supposed to close, it's supposed to remain open for up to 6 months so you don't need to reapply from scratch.

I was going to suggest that was how it should work, claim stay open until six consecutive months pass in which you are entitled to nothing. The page OP linked does say you might have to re-apply after a five-week month, which appears to contradict this. But if re-apply just means a few minutes on the internet and there's no break in your claim (just one month with no UC due to higher income) then this doesn't seem so bad.

Thing is, though, that in the "4 week" months, the UC is actually overpaid, as it's based on 4 weeks of income rather than a month, i.e. 4.3 weeks. So in reality, you're getting a third more UC than entitled to for 3 months and then get none in month 4, which just balances it out.

I had the same thought as this poster, who get there first with it.

I had to move over to UC when I changed jobs. I got emergency taxed for two months wages, which was given back as a lump sum (£400) in Septembers pay.

UC said this is income even though it was a rebate as I don’t earn enough to pay tax.

That sounds right to me, I think I read that UC is based on net pay and the actual date you receive it, so this posters UC would have been higher than normal for the months when excessive deductions were made, and lower in the month when the deduction was refunded.

The money you get is not for the previous 6 weeks but for the next calender month.

I think this is wrong - government web pages say there are only seven days for which you are not paid (and that doesn't apply if renewing a claim after a 5-week month.) When a new claimant waits five to six weeks, one week is the unpaid period, four weeks is the assesment period and the possible sixth week is the time it takes the payment to go through once it's made. So, if there are only 7 unpaid days, the payments are for the previous month, and arrive a week into the current month.

I think I now understand why UC is the way it is, with regard to 5 weeks months etc. UC is treating everyone regardless of circumstances equally. It doesn't care how many payments you get in a month, or what pay period you may have in one or more employments. All it cares about is the sum total of net (of tax) money you receive.

Literally all it wants to know before computing your entitlement is details of what you've actually taken home, as submitted to HMRC by payroll software.

If it were to start worrying about more abstract factors like whether you are paid weekly or only on a full moon, or if it tried to track your income over a period of time, that would be a level of complexity that would cause hugely more fuck-ups. In fact it would become as error-prone as the tax-credit system, which does try for a more complex approach in which your payments depend on an often wrong conception of what your annual income is.

I notice you cherry picked what a single poster has said there firesuit.

No mention of the dead man, or the couple in a tent with their children being looked after by the local authority.

From under the Guardian article.

newb 2h ago

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Employers are going to be very unhappy when their workers have to keep taking time off to sort out UC fuck ups. Especially retail employers A Christmas rollout of UC will include retail employees at the busiest time of the year!!! CEO of Next can see this coming hence his comments on Question Time last week.

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Miasma newb 1h ago

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Yes. They will sack those workers, who will then immediately be deemed to have made themselves “intentionally unemployed” and kicked off all benefits.

This is a sick Tory game for poor people, where whatever choices you make, the end result is going to always be destitution. After all they say, why should people with money have to subsidise people who choose not to have any? And if they can’t be bothered to be rich, then they bring their penury on themselves. This is how their minds work.

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newb Miasma 1h ago

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Ah but then employers will have to readvertise these jobs and do interviews all the while while being short staffed at the busiest time of year and then the new employees will also likely be UC claimants so the whole cycle will just start again.

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Miasma newb 48m ago

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Which is unsustainable. The cycle is a spiral, in which employers can’t fill vacancies and the increased unemployed with no benefits can’t afford to buy anything, so companies get poorer, which drives down wages, throwing more people on to UC. And so on. Eventually the economy collapses completely

UC can't take into account 5-week months, because it is intentionally ignorant of your pay-period. Or even of how many jobs you have. Or any details whatsoever about why you earn a particular amount of money in a given month. All that is far to complex to cope with. It's keeping its eye on the ball: how much did you earn after tax in that month. That's all that matters.

At least that's the impression I have at the moment. I will keep an eye on the thread in case there are any contradictory facts. I will never be in a position to claim UC, but I do like to understand both the tax and benefits systems, and I'd like to understand UC better.

Must be nice looking out of your Ivory tower there, firesuit