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.

Can we please not make this about Brexit? Sensible people on both sides of that debate can surely see the massive problems with UC?

I agree with you autumn

Frank Field is a compassionate and caring politician.

I'm totally flabbergasted by this. Luckily I'm not personally affected but certainly feel for those who are. I've signed the petition, but what else can I do?

20nil but Brexit is very relevant because policies like this are just the beginning of this lot are in power when we leave.

It's not aboit whether we should leave or not. It' s about WTF will the oeople wgo designed a system as cruel as this do when they find themselves with a their power massively increased.

Please don't stifle debate about this

It's NOT about whether we leave. You can be pro-leave and anti this lot being in power when we do.

But you seem to think the electorate is weak? We can't demand change? We can't have our own laws to protect people.. We have never been a leading light in the world with regards to human rights and laws?

Perhaps forget about u credit then and just waste your time trying to bring down the government.
Personally I have faith in the British public and I bet this doesn't go through or it fails very soon. I just want it stopped now before anyone suffers. I would rather focus on that.

Labour are against UC in its current form at least and wanted to pause the roll out. They voted against it in the parliament debate this week and it was thought that there were enough conservatives who would vote against it too and therefore give an against majority. May feared this happening and so ordered her conservative MPs to just not vote. Great parliament eh?!

Agree again with autumn

I dislike the current UC system, but the Tory government are not a dictatorship. They can be voted out, but there needs to be s viable alternative to vote for.

The point is that UC and this farcical policy isn't a one off.

It's part of a much wider and deeply concerning attack on all of our rights, quality of life and prospects.

The Tories are toxic.

This is a (very unfunny) joke and obviously done on purpose.

We haven't gone to UC yet but being a single parent on low pay this will affect me. So much for being better off at work.

I disagree with you op, in principle the idea of uc sounds good. Sadly all our politicians seem out of touch with poor people and daily grind of life. Including corbyn et all and especially Blair and Brown.

Frank isn't, he understands it all too well, hence get the hell out of the eu

I wouldn't bother appealing to the other tories but I think theresa would stop it with pressure and I don't believe for one second she would want any family to be left without money.

The party I am reeling from abusing rights, surpressing free speech is Labour.

I am terrified about this! I struggle now on tax credits (despite working) I get paid 4-weekly and hadn't realised that would involve missing a payment and reapplying each year!

I am luckier than most. There are people in my life who would help me out rather than see me evicted or see DS go without food BUT I am proud and hate asking and don't see why I should have to! I am in the last year of my degree so I am hoping against hope that I end up in a better paid job before this comes in in my area but I don't know. And even then it scares me for others who would still be at the mercy of it.

Also, and please forgive my naivety on this, why is it legal for May to ban the conservatives from voting in parliamentary debates?! I'm not sure that it's worth continually signing petitions and writing to MPs about how unfair this is if May can just continue to order her party to withdraw from any vote - but is it worth trying to fight that instead?

Personally I have faith in the British public

Are you not concerned then, that this government wants to push through whatever deal they get (or fail to get) without giving the public or our representatives the opportunity to have a say, and they want to rewrite our laws behind closed doors, again without the public having a say.

Our democratic system is based on the public having a say but they want to sidestep that while making the biggest changes to our laws we've ever seen at one go.

It's not about being "strong" or "having faith". If they change thousands of laws at one fell swoop, the logistics in unpicking all of that are mindbogglingly complex and time consuming.

We need to object before they do that not after.

I’m not trying to stifle debate, and believe me, I have views on Brexit. I’m just trying to keep to the main point. EU or no EU, our parliament and our politicians can and should stop this punitive, damaging farce of a roll out.

I also hadn't heard about their plans for the internet until reading this thread and I am appalled! One would hope that there's no way in hell that would get through. But then there's lots of things going through I would have said that about that seem to be getting the go ahead

Cake just keep writing kick up stink in fact I think mnhq should do something on this.

They've are for families etc.. Justine is Labour, they pick up stories from here all the time. One almighty stink is needed

I am more worried about people in government trying t stretch out the process to turn try and over turn it if they string it out long enough.

The poster complaining about the child element wasn’t just frothing about terminology ctaylor, she was complaining about the increasingly restricted definition of who counts as a dependent child. Maybe learn to read people’s posts before patronising them.

I can see why the vey first draft of this policy might have said “if salary is paid weekly and UC monthly then some months you’ll be paid too much and some months you’ll be paid too little but it’ll all average out in the wash”. But it’s insane that it got to the final stage and people drew handy little explanatory diagrams without thinking “hang on, this is not an acceptable way of proceeding”.

I agree 20nil.

Maybe another thread is needed focusing on this issue

Not only is there the 6 week wait, but do people know that claimants get nothing at all for week one?
I have no idea what the reason for this is, so right from the very start people may be plunged into debt that they cannot recover from as they'll not be getting that week one payment backdated further down the line.

I am petrified that I shall have to claim this benefit at some point, I'm a single parent to an under 5, at University and atm eligible to claim Income Support over the long summer break if I've not managed to secure temporary employment. I'm already taking steps to save what little I can to have as a bit of a buffer should I need it.

Autumn I will do and hopefully there are enough voices to make a change.

I have just checked when UC will affect my area. From next month, if there's a change of circumstance for existing claimants or you have to apply for the first time it will be UC. If your circumstances don't change, you can stay on tax credits until 2019. So I just need to make sure absolutely nothing changes 😫

However, this was at the bottom of the page (the part in the red box). It's not an official govt site it was called entitled to or something, but does anyone know if they are sticking to it? The cynical part of me thinks the way they've set the system up so that people have to reapply as a new claim might be to get around such promises

Hope my husband doesn't start abusing me like the first one did, with two small children. No safety net for women, now.

The Dutch benefits system gets round this by just paying everyone a '13th month'. Employed people get it too. So everyone actually gets a bit more.

Common sense. Time governments of all stripes learned it.

I care for a lady with severe physical and mental health issues. UC has her TERRIFIED....and it’s not even being rolled out here yet, to put someone like this lady through such anxiety and terror is beyond inhuman. The sad thing is that this Govt simply do not care.

Great, thanks to the pp above have just been able to check when ours comes in, it's next April

I wonder if I will be able to continue my degree :(