Has anyone else been experiencing delays in receiving the first payment recently? Sent my form off in Feb, expecting my pay to start at the beginning of April when I planned to stop working as self employed due to relocation and no point in moving business just for a few weeks. I had a message saying they received the form in March and a few weeks ago, a letter telling me how much in national insurance contributions to pay to top up the allowance, which I paid via bacs about 10 days ago. Since then no payments have appeared in my account and I have heard zilch from them. Tried to ring them today to chase up to only get an automated message saying they are on strike at DWP, so no luck there. Is that what's causing the backlog in payments? dp has been topping up my account and I have been taking out savings, but we can't carry on like this forever!