To ask why it’s so hard to claim UC?

[Namddf]

I’ve had a migration letter telling me I have to apply for UC (currently on Tax Credits).

I work full time but was previously self-employed and the Ltd company still exists (it’s dormant) so I declared that on the form but said I don’t get any income from it. I’ve now been told I have to attend a ‘self-employment’ appointment at the Job Centre to discuss how I am gainfully self-employed. I am not!

I’ve tried to tell them this but the only way of communicating is via the online ‘journal’ and they take a week to reply and don’t answer my questions anyway. They keep setting appointments at a Job Centre an hour away (not my local one as apparently it is temporarily closed) but I can’t make any of them as I work full time. Am I supposed to take unpaid leave to attend?

I just want to speak to someone on the phone about it, but every number I call says they can’t answer questions about UC. I’m at a total loss.

Any advice?

For UC, they DO class operating through a limited company as self employed, and NOT an employee or director.

Reading that I would say yes, you are right.

But then… this is what it says online (which is why I told them I had been self-employed)

I think I’m starting to agree.

The irony is that I’m going to be worse off (I think) on UC than I was on Tax Credits and it really isn’t very much per month anyway. If I didn’t really need the extra money I would just give up!

Just wanted to say that in the UK 2023, the thought that hard working men & women having to claim benefits alongside working full time is actually very depressing. I do hope you get sorted op x

Unfortunately thats not correct. UC ignores the company structure for single company directors and treats the person as self employed and employed.

It's designed that way to make it a miserable experience and to reduce the amount paid out. All set up by Tories under austerity, they think anyone claiming is a scrounger and should be punished.

Yes, she's always been paid on time.

You will need to attend a F2F meeting to get your claim put into payment. If you reported that you were employed and self-employed the Work Coach will have to make a decision on whether you are gainfully self-employed (GSE). From what you've said the chances are you won't be considered GSE because your focus is on your employed work. But whilst your business exists and has the potential to earn something the WC which probably set it up so that you report income monthly even if NIL. Once that's done you probably won't need to attend again unless something goes wrong with your earmings or you forget to report your self employed earnings. Your PAYE will come through automatically unless your employer is slapdash about putting it on the payroll.

The ‘argument’ I had was due to housing element but I preemptively knew they wouldn’t understand the case and asked for a direct referral to a DM. Rather than accepting they knew little about it, they decided to refuse based on their own opinions rather than sending it to someone with the knowledge and authority to make that decision.

They are spectacularly bad about housing costs, I agree. I've had to draft mandatory reconsideration requests for clients to post on their journals about things like non-dependant deductions, bedroom entitlement and bedroom tax, which any half-competent clerk in a council's housing benefit team would know off the top of their head.

One of the worst things about UC is that a lot of stuff is at the discretion of the work coach, so there's no consistency. And afaik, there's no monitoring of the decisions that are taken, so if a work coach had a particular downer on any one group of people, and treated them less favourably, it would probably never come to light.

I appreciate it can be a bit shit at the beginning but once you get over that initial hurdle it’s fine. I work full time Hmrc tells them what I earn they give me 600 very useful pounds a month. I log on once a month and agree to tell them if my circumstances change and that I’ve read the sanctions. No annual form filling or finding out that you’ve been overpaid during the course of the year.

I agree, but it's really common in my part of the SE where rents are high.

It's not really changed in the last 20 years since Gordon Brown introduced working tax credits to supplement wages, which in itself replaced income support which had been in place prior to that. We've always had state benefits topping up lower earners. Nothing new at all.

A director of a Ltd company is still classed as self employed by DWP

I went through three months of stress regarding reclaiming childcare costs. They kept asking me for evidence which I would upload and then they'd ask for it again and I'd upload it again and this shit show kept going round in circles.

No one would speak to me about it on the phone and my work coach just used to say the childcare team would contact me if they needed any information. But the point was the childcare team weren't reading the evidence properly and couldn't add up !

Anyway, I could go on. But, I wrote a letter of complaint and uploaded that as evidence instead. I found the best way to get a response is to put your message under the 'payments' section rather than 'message for my work coach'.

When I started doing that, the questions I were asking would get answered properly and someone compus mentus read the complaint and sorted it out

YES.

This is what we had! We had the same last month, refusing us childcare because of something that was written on the invoice.

Something that had been on there EVERY month before - stating Sept-Aug payment months.
clearly stating above that, the month I was paying.

they find the most stupid of reasons not to pay and try fighting it. It's like talking to a frog.
If they don't give you childcare payments that month, you're never going to see it.

It's like that because it's run by DWP instead of HMRC, who ran Tax Credits. So, with tax credits, you could call intelligent, knowledgeable people on the phone and they would help you.
With UC you are treated from the outset as if you are unemployed, and therefore ( in their eyes) worthless
It's a feature not a bug.

I’ve noticed that - it’s like they’re assuming that you’re unemployed or underemployed. I’m not! I’m just a single parent and my income isn’t enough to bring up 3 kids on my own.

Fuckinfumin

It really was horrendous. Had no issues beforehand but all of a sudden the receipts from the childcare provider weren't accepted.

I even had to get a letter from the school explaining how the booking system operated. Three months they didn't pay the childcare costs properly.

I was almost in tears on the phone and they also put the phone down on me.

You have to really keep on top of them to make sure they don’t wrongly sanction you / deduct from your payments for some unknown reason.

I’ve been keeping a really close eye on how my account was being dealt with, and managed to get them to pay back nearly £700 they had wrongly claimed had been overpaid! It’s a lot of admin though so utterly ridiculous we have to chase them up as their people can’t do their jobs correctly!

In my role I attend jcps regularly (I don't work for DWP) and I can say the work coaches are vastly overworked and have very little time to spend on each claimant (I think it's 11 minutes each or thereabouts) so to label them useless is really fucking rude. For every genuine case they are dealing with multiple fraudulent/erroneous claims . It's soul destroying work and the coaches are abused on a daily basis. It's a thankless role because the system isn't working great , but don't blame the people at the coalface!

@Hearmeout close. Ten minute back to back appointments.

I've spoken to some proper arseholes that refused point blank to help me.

Yes, but her claim was active before she started work, when she first split with her daughter's father.

I could just repeat my post verbatim I guess...

I'm over worked and underpaid and understaffed much like many other nurses in the NHS.
But I don't treat people like arseholes.