Pleased that 4 mothers who took the government to court over universal credit won.

[birdsandroses]

I confess not an AIBU, posting for traffic. I am very happy that four brave single working mothers won their court case about the way UC is administered, although it still could go to appeal. UC has been discussed a few times on Mumsnet with some sharing how it is causing a lot of hardship for some. Some posters have questioned this, though not all.

I have read that due to the way payments fall working claimants can find that if they get two salary payments falling over one calendar month, such as paid early due to bank holiday. the UC part is stopped that month. Some on threads here have said that if the payments are taken over a whole year then financially they don’t lose out but obviously when you are on a very tight budget it can cause huge problems if you are not aware you will suddenly have no UC payment that month. However, others have said the claimant does lose out financially over the year as well as the difficulty of budgeting when one month there is no payment. I couldn’t work it out as much as I tried. However, newspaper articles today are saying that people can be out of pocket. One of the four women who brought the case to court was cited as being £500 down over the year. I have now gathered the reason they are out of pocket is they lose work allowances for any month they are wrongly classed as not receiving a salary.

The Children Poverty Action group gives full details here in their press release about the case. cpag.org.uk/content/high-court-finds-dwp-unlawful-universal-credit-assessments

Amber Rudd has today finally acknowledged problems with UC and is making some changes although many organisations say though welcome they are still not enough.

@babyroobs, thanks for sharing that UC is at least working better for those who are terminally ill.

You shared they have recently passed new legislation meaning that people who would have been entitled to the severe disability premium of esa can now no longer go onto UC. Until this happened if people were on esa and got a severe disability premium (a person qualifies for sdp if they receive the standard or enhanced care component of PIP, claim ESA too and live alone, so high needs) but moved out of the area to another area where they would now have to apply for UC and no longer ESA they lose all their SDP. It was a loss of £180 month which is a lot. Now if a person moves area they can still get ESA and their sdp.

When all people are eventually transferred onto UC, those who get sdp will get transitional cover. Transitional protection ensures that a claimant moving from one benefit to another does not suffer a loss in income at the point of change. However, claimants receiving transitional payments usually ‘mark time’ and do not receive any April benefit increases (though these are frozen at the moment) until the level of their benefit matches that of other claimants. So in the long term people who are on ESA with a severe disability premium will eventually lose the £180 a month so it is still a cut for some of the most disabled people in the population.

Also I presume once all people are moved onto UC (Rudd says plan is still to start this in 2020 if the 10,000 test number goes ok) which may take up to 3 years so looking at 2023, any new claimants will not get the transitional cover. Therefore under UC they will be getting £140 a month less than they would have under ESA and a severe disability premium. I think it’s an awful cut.

To add to the above, the disabilityrights organisation wrote about the change of legislation that meant no person on esa and in receipt of the severe disability premium would be made to apply for UC instead if they moved area. Disability Rights welcomes this change (they calculate this has effected 4000 people so far) however they go on t say:

“In reality, the reform does nothing to prevent the injustice of UC not including the SDP.

In the future, countless new disabled UC claimants will lose entitlement to around £2,000 annually.

It has also to be remembered that any transitional SDP will not be subject to any future increase.

So its real value will inevitably fall over time.”

I have no idea what is going on and that upsets me

I got paid twice in Dec as was early payday due to Xmas (NHS decision) so received no UC at all.

I now technically will be seen as earning nothing in January as I will have No wages during assessment period - so will I get sanctioned for this?

but have to wait until the assessment period is up on 22nd to find out

Essentially it is a guessing game what you do/don’t get

I may well get nothing from 28th Nov to 28th Feb

Most likely, you'll get the payment that you would get if you were out of work.

But, as you know, there's no guarantees about these things.

I don’t know what the out of work payment is, or whether I will have to take more time off for the 50 mile round trip to the job centre. I am going to ask my FemBot job centre lady named Jade who I can converse with via my special Journal but she will likely tell me she doesn’t know either

Tax credits have also passed on my overpayment to UC but no one can tell me at what % they will take this back at

If you go into your journal and go into payments you will see how much you are paying in tax credit arrears. In the small print underneath there is a phone number (different to the main UC number) and you can ring up and find out how much you owe.

You can’t negotiate how much you pay though (I tried to).

I also didn’t get December’s UC, it’s a terrible system.

Following on from Boswellox & BigChocFrenzy ( such an infrequent poster here that I never know how to do the bold-name thingy), I just wanted to point out that in the circle of life, things come, well, full circle. I’m a single adoptive mother of two non-blood related children, both of whom were removed at birth from their chaotic and dysfunctional birth parents, in the aftermath of shockingly cataclysmic incidents happening to their separate birth siblings. As a direct consequence of adopting my two children, and taking on their separate traumas and ongoing and lifelong physical injuries and challenges, I had to resign from my well paid career and now, due to a variety of factors, as a family we are reliant on Universal Credit (AKA living one step removed from the workhouse).

In the crudest terms, I personally am being punished financially for stepping up to the plate and taking on the responsibility of other people’s children. Of course, I love beyond reason my two children and I will provide for them while there is breath in my body (and beyond, because we live frugally and I squirrel away everything I can to ensure my eldest, who has won a place to a super-selective grammar school, and her little sister can match their peers and, say, get to university). I do find it galling, though, to be treated so shabbily as a UC claimant by government and country, though, when, by conservative estimates I am saving the UK approximately £100K a year, because it costs upwards of 50K per annum to keep a child in care.

@Zofloramummy

They only passed it on last week - I tried to call and intercept it before it went to UC

I will confess that I have resorted to taking out a loan because I was forced into UC by my local council (who have an even worse system) i suddenly owed them £785 and they would not take this out of UC. It’s more economical monthly for me to refinance a small loan I had for another year than pay both the loan AND housing benefit office, whilst only ever having 1 payment from UC since October 2018. I was intending to pay off the TC with the loan too but now I can’t

I am just surviving on my salary and the 1 UC payment in the last 3 months really plus now owing £1k in debt

It’s fucked

Pookie - You will get whatever your full Uc amount is and there will be no deductions as you will have no wages reported during your assessment period. So you will get whatever your full UC amount is ( the total of all the elements you get), personal element/ child element if you have kids, rent element etc.

Thanks
If I get the full amount this month am going to try to pay some of the housing benefit overpayment loan off

You'll be told to read the 'Payments' screen once it's been dealt with and you've already read it by then so the reply was pointless

Same if you phone them.

Interestingly, if somebody phones up and asks about the two pay periods, they'll be told to get their boss to send a letter saying that they haven't doubled their salary. And then absolutely nothing will happen. Because it gets people off the phones.

I messaged FemBot about the 2 salaries for Dec - she did not care, just said you will get zero this month, don’t need to do anything.

Have messaged her about the tax credits as it’s not showing up on my account yet.

There is 1 reason I like UC and this is no longer having to submit my bank statements to the local council. I always found this humiliating, I had to send them all my stuff just to prove to them I did not have a spare £120 a month for their bloody overpayment. Haven’t had UC delving into my bank account yet, when I signed up I showed her my bank account on my phone and she said ‘yeah ok that’s fine’

I expect that's because they access them electronically as per the consent you had to give when first submitting the claim. Fraud prevention, apparently.

Thank fuck Amber Rudd is in charge now and is making vital changes.

Given that she instructed lawyers to defend this ridiculous system all the way through to the bitter end, I really wouldn't give her undue credit for this.

Thank goodness for legal aid lawyers.

It’s an unfair system in the first place and no tory should be praised for the changes that should have been done from day one.

However, Esther McVey responded to Frank Fields in the House of Commons regarding women turning to prostitution because of UC and she simply replied that there were other jobs.

I’m glad Amber is in charge and not heartless McVey.

The next battle?

£19" 000 benefits cuts for pensioners.

I did mention this on previous threads in the past but it now comes into force on 15th May

benefitsinthefuture.com/19000-benefits-cut-for-pensioners/

So if one couple is under SPA and the other over SPA the latter will be classed as being of working age until the former is over 65.

universalcreditsuffer.com/2019/01/15/dwp-sneaks-in-7300-cut-to-pension-credit-couples-with-a-working-age-member/

As I understand it means the younger partner won’t benfit from pension credit but will have to stay on UC. Where previously they could be 55 for example with no work requirement.

www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/pension-credit-cut-benefits-payment-government-austerity-conservatives-brexit-a8728631.html

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/legal_money_matters/3479693-Changes-to-Pension-Credit

@helenadove, gosh, what another punitive cut. Why should someone over 65 lose this entitlement just because their partner is below the age?

It's madness. People on lowest incomes need the same amount each week so they can budget. This up and down amounts is insane