Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what progress her Department has made on ensuring that monthly salaries are automatically reallocated within assessment periods for universal credit, where a claimant gets two monthly salary payments in a single assessment period following the decision made by the Court of Appeal in June 2020 in the case of Johnson, Woods, Barrett and Stewart v. the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions.

The legislation we introduced on 16th November 2020 provides a remedy to the Court of Appeal Judgment in the case of Johnson and others and allows us to reallocate monthly earnings to another assessment period. This means that claimants affected by this issue will have one salary payment taken into account in each assessment period rather than two.

To meet the Court of Appeal Judgment as soon as was practicable we introduced a solution based on a streamlined dispute process currently in place. This has enabled those who are affected to benefit under this regulation and claimants simply need to tell their work coach either in one of their regular discussions or via their journal if they think they are affected.

We expect to automate identification of affected claimants in mid-summer 2021. This will allow us to correct awards proactively before they are paid, without the need for the claimant to raise the issue.