Almost half of all claimants of Universal Credit feel they will be unable to manage their money when the new benefits regime is introduced next year research has revealed.
Universal Credit will replace all out of work benefits, housing payments and in work benefits such as Working and Child Tax Credits. Unlike the current system, all payments will be made monthly, whilst there will no longer be an option to have rent paid directly to landlords.
This has led to concerns that those already on pitifully small incomes may have difficulties managing budgets and may fall into further poverty and rent arrears due to the changes.
The DWP are currently carrying out pilots projects to test the new payments system and the transition to monthly, online only benefits administration. Predictably they are refusing to reveal the exact results of these projects. What they are prepared to tell us reveals why.
Ever the optimist, Lord Freud, the Minister for Welfare Reform, claims that just 54% of claimants feel they will manage the transition to direct payments – when housing benefit payments are no longer sent direct to landlords. The number of people claiming Housing Benefits, which is available to those in and out of work alike, is over 5 million. What scant information has been revealed from the pilots suggests that around two and a quarter million people may fall into rent arrears due to the implementation of Universal Credit.
Astonishingly Lord Fraud attempts to spin this as a good thing, although concedes that ‘more work is needed’. Perhaps of most concern is that the study appears to have been carried out using social housing tenants, where rents are lower and some support is already available through housing offices for struggling tenants.
In the private sector, where rents are soaring and landlords can evict tenants at the drop of the hat, the impact of Universal Credit is likely to be even more devastating.
Along with a toxic combination of housing benefit cuts and rocketing rents, the impact of this Government’s flagship welfare reform increasingly look like levels of homelessness never before witnessed in the UK. This social deficit, of poverty, poor housing and desperation, is the real legacy that Iain Duncan Smith and Lord Fraud are leaving to the next generation.
the void 
I am sorry but this article baffles me. I am sorry to tell you that everywhere I have been housing benefit is almost never paid direct to landlords and this has been the case for a number of years. Exceptions are unusual and the claimant must show good reason for being unable to pay and have supporting evidence such as doctors letter. It is a shame the point is being missed here because there has also been an increasing shortfall in peoples benefit and rents people have to pay, meaning even the most basic benefits have to be used to top up rent payments. I have no doubt however that the universal benefit will be so arranged as to make sure people on benefits suffer even more.
At present the housing benefit office calculate eligible rent at an amount one third of the average rent for the type of property claimed for. I have never found a property for rent at this amount nor did I do so when the amount was one half. It is also worth noting that it is now very difficult to find properties for rent that will accept those on benefit, those with poor credit records. No surprise that homelessness is increasing.
And sanctions, please investigate benefit sanctions.
speak for yourself
I agree. Trying to get your rent paid directly to the landlord is nigh on impossible.
@Bill Filbert, @ Rob; I don’t know where you live but all council housing tenants and Housing Association tenants in receipt of benefits currently have their rent paid direct- at least around here they do. It was introduced nationally by Thatcher because people weren’t paying their rent.
It may be different in the private sector, but I can assure you, you can apply to have your rent paid direct if you can show hardship- which would, in my view be anybody on benefits.
Actually it is not that difficult, even now to get your housing benefit paid directly to your landlord, and it certainly does not require any ‘doctors letter’. What IS required is that the tenant already be in arrears, usually either £800 worth of arreas, or two months rent. Armed with a letter from your landlord or rental agency to this effect you can apply to your local council to have your rent paid directly ‘in order to secure your tenancy’ i.e. to prevent eviction proceedings.
It is the case that paying LHA monthly for those on benefits will contribute to rising arrears, as this most definately has been the case since the changes that insituted monthly payments. If Universal Credit does not contain the safeguard of providing for the rent component to be paid directly to the landlord then it is certain that more tenants who are on welfare benefit will find themselves in arrears.
Picture the scenario; it’s near the end of the month, a family has run out of food and cash with which to feed the gas and electrickery meter. The only funds remaining in their bank account are those earmarked for council tax, water rates, and rent. The two children are hungry and the parents have already gone without to feed them. They have to have cash to feed the meters otherwise they have no gas (i.e. no heating and no hot water) and no electricity (i.e. lighting and cooker). The rent money is going to get used to pay for these essential requirements.
More housholds in arrears means more tenants facing eviction, with a consequent rise in homelessness, and that is what families who are already living on the edge will face under Universal credit, as regulated by Iain Duncan Smith!
Fraudulent Freudian Bastard….unelected Lord of Sweet Fuck All, attacking the poor for fun, helping his Fuhrer IDS make life hell for the disadvantaged.
Oh, what fun and folderols they are having as they set about smashing the benefit system to bits on behalf of their vicious pals Unum and Atos, those singularly discredited bastard companies whose only mantra is , ” Computer says ‘NO’….”
Absolute cunts. All of them.
The welfare reform act was actually the brainchild of Lord Fraud, back in the Labour days, He was commissioned by Tony Blair to reform the benefits system, then along came cunts like James Purnell and later IDS to rub more poison into Fraud’s new system.
Fraud is an ex banker whose only motive is wealth creation for the top 1% and helping companies like Atos and Unum to make more and more profit for themselves.
I think that ultimately JCP will be taken out of the loop and the likes of A4e and Serco will be given the priviledge of policing the new Universal Credit, with more bonuses given for the more hardship they create for the poor. I think the Work Programme will be abolished, as no-one will survive on Universal credit long enough to be refered to the Work Programme, with many claimants getting sanctioned for petty offences just days after first claiming the UC.
Its very very grim. The Universal Credit must never be allowed to get off the ground, or people are going to die. Lord Fraud will become guilty of mass murder of the poor with his benefit denying regime that is Universal Credit.
Private tenants generally already have the Housing Benefit paid into their bank account and are then responsible for paying the landlord. The impact of Universal Credit which frightens me is the way all of your money will now come in one lump payment once a month. At the moment I get HB once a month for the rent D/D going out on the first, Child Benefit once a month about the middle of the month, Income Support once a fortnight on a Wednesday and Child Tax Credits once a week on a Thursday. If I report a change of circumstances to any of these they immediately suspend payments while they sort it out. This usually takes a few weeks. Sometimes they randomly decide to halt payments themselves for spurious reasons, then reinstate after I’ve been down to the office and jumped through hoops. Because all the payments are staggered I can usually limp on paying things more or less on time even while one of them is suspended. under UC all of that money will come in one payment, which means ALL of it will be suspended if it’s sitting in some overworked DWP person’s in-tray. I can’t see my landlord being very happy about that. Or my kids when I can’t afford to feed them
A third agree here, I know from overcomplicated experience that the only way – in Brum, at least – to get money paid to a landlord directly is to declare yourself as incapable of managing your own affairs in writing – which I did just to not have to think about it. This was also the case when I was living in Devon recently. Lord Freud seems to be a couple of policies short of a current agenda here. Still, I suppose it makes it easier to pass new policy if it is already the one being currently used…
Unelected, unmandated, uncaring, unfit for office…in the pocket of Unum.
Unbelievable. No. Just another Tory Laird fucking the serfs for fun and profit.
It stinks just like this entire coalition, Cameron is there by default, could not even be democratically voted in with a majority, Lib-Dems leapfrogged Labour whilst selling out their voters just to taste power in the only way they would ever do so, and the arrogance continues. This country cannot take this coalition until 2015.. by that time what on earth will be left of democracy and human rights?, they are slowly dismantling this country branch by branch until our very lives will be owned by a private associated company. Time to buy our Guy Fawkes masks. V For Vendetta people.. V for Vendetta. Check it out… http://youtu.be/c8UtojJT8ts
All part f the coalitions ethnic cleansing?
absolutely. and doing rather well at it. and those managing to hang on to a job are next on the list. these b*stards take no prisoners. just like the 3rd reich.
and if Cameron achieves his triumphal overall majority in 2015, the gloves will be off and the next group will be the old whose votes he must have at the moment – it will be turkeys voting for Christmas so that the land will end up back in the hands of the very few
The pertinent phrase is “vulnerable tenants” who can have their rent paid directly to landlords without them even asking or having a say in the matter, in some cases.
However that is not the elephant in the room of payment of HB under UC.
I am unlikely to be a UC claimant as I am 65 next summer but my LA will send out a computer generated letter of arrears after two weeks non-payment of rent. Three of these automated letters automatically generate eviction proceedings.
Since I can’t see Lord Fraud or Irritable Dunce Syndrome agreeing to pay UC in advance there will be an inordinate mess or all 550 Local Authorities will need to reprogramme or replace their computer systems.
The comments above are mixing up the different options for those claimants living in the private rented sector (LHA) and those living in the social housing sector (HB).
LHA has been paid by default to the private sector tenant for a while unless alternative arrangements are called for … this will become the norm for tenants in the social sector with the introduction of Universal Credit.
As for UC as a whole … I expect it to be disastrous 😦
it’s (UC) designed to melt down the benefits system. i expect there is a private company (Unum?) waiting to step in and take over.
Bang on- and they won’t be paying cash- there’ll be 21st century workhouses- and if you haven’t got a job and won’t go voluntarily, you’ll be classified a vagrant and sent compulsorily. There you’ll be expected to work for your keep.
The UK is Prime real estate – what better way to clear out houses country wide than by killing off a few hundred thousand people by ‘gently’ depriving them of help and ramping up the pressure.
Capitalism has subtle genocide built in – there is always a level below which people are worth less than the hierarchies built with the money saved by starving children
Some landlords/organisations require their tenants to pay them HB directly.
If this changes, they’ll be evicted.
Because money is paid late in arrears, rent and bills are usually/often paid late. That is on the current system. The new system will be worse. If UC is paid monthly, will people (when it starts) be left with no money for a month?
UC will be so conditional and have so many hoops to jump through in order to obtain it and keep obtaining it, that many people will fall foul of these draconian “conditions” – such as being forced to do 35 hours a week of monitored “jobsearch”, or get sanctioned. Or work 30 hours a week on workfare and then do 10 hours a week of mandatory forced jobsearch on top of this, with failure to comply meaning sanctions of up to 3 years loss of benefits. Unless you can prove to JCP+ that you are then totally destitute with no savings at all, then you wont get any hardship payments either, and these hardship payments when you do get them will be a mere pittance at 60% of JSA rate, AND they will be REPAYABLE, so like a loan.
What will happen is that everyone will be forced off JSA due to not doing 35 hours a week of monitored jobsearch, or not doing full time workfare. Then they have to spend all their savings before they get to live on £42.60 a week of hardship payments, which must eventually all be repaid.
There is no doubt about it, Lord Fraud and Iain Duncan Schmidt have us totally stitched up with UC – it will be impossible to claim it without getting sanctioned a week or so later for breaking the claimant commitment, as no-one spends 35 hours a week doing jobsearch, so its an impossible requirement from the start.
You will end up having to live on just over £40 a week for everything, and get no housing benefit due to sanctions, and that £40 a week will be a loan, not a benefit – just enough to live on the streets and just survive.
This is the real grim future we will be facing under Universal Credit – a future where benefits are denied to most people, who then have to have state loans just to afford to eat, and no more.
Its time people woke up and smelt the coffee.
Of course UC is going to be a disaster, that is why we were fed that shite about cameron trying to oust iain duncan shite from the dwp, but “ibs was determined to stay on”, what a crock of shite. IBS is the sacrificial pawn to see it all through, and when we are all destitute cameron/clegg can then turn around and “apologise” for idshite’s “mistakes”. But that time idshite will have moved on to a cosy “directorship” in private healthcare/unemployment insurance. These cunts already KNOW what is about to fall on the weakest and most vulnerable members of society, they couldn’t give a fuck, they are laughing at us, they are all in it together.
Totally agree, well said. I think it would be very naive of us to believe the Tories are not well aware of the mass hunger, destitution and homelessness that their “reforms” will cause. The Tories are not this incompetent when it comes to implementing policies that make the well off even better off. They are evil, but they are not stupid, they know exactly what they are doing. I think it would be a mistake for us to underestimate them. I think you’re right, I think the Tories have deliberately designed Universal Credit to be chaotic, dysfunctional and unworkable, to drive the untermensch off all state benefits, which will then pave the way to abolish state benefits altogether.
Welcome to the 21st. Century death machine.
These cunts laugh at their paedophile parties as the dream up new ways to abuse the system for profit and kill the poor and disabled for fun.
These are our masters. Such has it ever been, as it always will. The only difference is they now don’t care if you know, and their gloves have come off to reveal their talons.
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just like Stalin before him are we soon to see statues of IDS all over the place…or maybe loads of camclegg ones Cameron standing proud with Clegg giving him a blow job…this tory government are going to cause chaos,atos are going to make millions in profit. And Merkel will be the leader of the fourth reich . Oh well time to take my pills… At some point there is going to be a mass action against this government. didn’t this tory bunch blame all the things that thay are now creating in society for the riots all over the country…are we just wait for the fuse to catch,because IDS has already lit it..
Why should the workshy and so-called ‘disabled’ who are too bone idle even to look for work be allowed to live a life of luxury paid for by the hard working taxpayers? How much longer must we have to support those useless eaters, whose constant sponging off the state has hindered the recovery of the economy from recession?|
well Nick you really should be careful what you say mate. Lets hope you stay healthy and you don’t suddenly need help. For a few good people like yourself have fallen on hard times and are now saying “I have paid my way and worked all my life and they are now treating me like dirt”. You can put me and a few of the other posters on here in the category…But just for good measure,I hope you need to see the doctor Monday morning and you are given some bad news about your health…see you on my forum begging for help with the forms and asking how come a french company has denied me benefits…here’s a tip for you mate…stop reading the daily mail. twat.
Change the record – we’re bored of hearing the same old boring Tory prattle. If you have nothing better to do than pretend to be the BNP leader, spouting Tory propaganda, then maybe its you that had better go to work than spend time reading this blog.
nick your a prick
Please go and kill yourself Nick you useless Tory cunt.
Does anyone actually know how the transition’s going to work? Ie. people are currently paid 2 weeks in arreas – will they be expected to make two weeks’ worth of money last 4 weeks when UC is introduced? If not, they’d have to pay 2 weeks’ arreas + 2 weeks’ ahead, which I can’t see them doing…
There’s the rub. Most tenants will automatically be in arrears for at least four weeks all the time so unless the landlords such as councils and housing associations modify their computer systems to take account of the payment delays, most tenants will be receiving eviction notices every month. Persistent late payments will of course mean eviction rendering them homeless and a void to be given to a ‘deserving poor’.
Universal Credit is cut from the same cloth as an electrickery pre-payment meter – you evict yourself!
And because you have made yourself ‘intentionally homeless’ you will not be allowed on any housing lists so that social housing becomes reduced to what’s needed for the ‘deserving poor’ and consequently vacant great swathes of desirable land will be redeveloped with much higher population densities than developers had dared dreamed of for the last 100 years.
And with homes beyond the means of the average working- or non-waged man or woman. So what will they do with us all? Workhouse then farmed out to their business friends as free labour a la Oliver Twist.
“Community Housing” (Workhouse by any other name) will be next on the cards. Displacement is the name of the game; they the untermenschs out of their homes and into “flagship”, state-of-the-art, purpose built facilities where the destitute will receive a program of re-education and work.
C’mon everybody.
Let us stop whingeing and whineing.
We ask ‘why’ we are being bent over and rogered, but the answer is obvious.
The State wants us to make mistakes, the State wants us – the British citizens – to accept full blame for our failings.
Then they can say that they are repairing our broken dysfunctional lives. It keeps them in the job.
The State is fighting hard to maintain control. The State is fighting to maintain the illusion, because the State realises that it’s historical lies are unravelling.
To keep a large number of Statesmen in the job, a Government coalition was formed. They kept their jobs safe from smaller and richer non-State political parties.
2 parties are being paid for a 1 party job.
Which party would’ve crumbled and fallen had this not have happened?
Do we work to build a better World for the minority who earn obscene sums of money.
100,000 people (plus a brainwashed army & featuring greedy fence sitters) vs 5 million people?
You tell me.
You are rightof course but where/what is the movement that will restore the country to some sort of functional decency?
Every individual who will not be corrupted by personal wealth is a starting point, my opinion of course.
That may rule me out.. I don’t know because I’ve always been poor.
See the problem? Human nature is the mother of all **** ups.
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His lordship baron of another planet needs psychotheraphy. He seems not tohave listened to his grandpappy. A thoroughly nasty man.
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