Universal Credit

(asked on 7th February 2019) - View Source

Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many and what proportion of universal credit claimants have (a) been informed of, (b) applied successfully for, and (c) applied unsuccessfully for twice monthly payment options.


Answered by
Alok Sharma Portrait
Alok Sharma
COP26 President (Cabinet Office)
This question was answered on 18th February 2019

Universal Credit provides an unprecedented level of personalised support, which is tailored and managed through Work Coaches. Unlike the legacy system Universal Credit Work Coaches know each person’s case and have more tools than ever before to help people prepare for work and get a job.

Personal Budgeting Support aims to prepare claimants for the financial changes Universal Credit brings. It provides support to help them manage their monthly payments and prioritise essential bills, such as rent and utilities, as they move over to Universal Credit.

In response to question part (a), the Personal Budgeting Support process includes a conversation at their initial work search interview to gauge their potential support needs – meaning all claimants are informed of support that includes alternative payment arrangements and more frequent payments.

In response to question part (b), the available information on the number of households on Universal Credit that receive More Frequent Payments or Scottish Choices More Frequent Payments is published and can be found at:

https://stat-xplore.dwp.gov.uk/

Guidance on how to extract the information required can be found at:

https://sw.stat-xplore.dwp.gov.uk/webapi/online-help/Getting-Started.html

Please be aware that as the statistics are based on whether a household has actually been paid a More Frequent Payment, it will not include households that had a More Frequent Payment set up but were not actually paid more frequently, for instance because they cancelled the More Frequent Payment before they were paid.

For question (c), the information requested is not readily available and to provide it would incur disproportionate cost.

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