Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, if he will take steps to ensure the quicker payment of benefits to those on temporary work placements.

Where someone takes-up work of 16 hours or more each week, either on a temporary or permanent basis, they are treated as being in remunerative work and their JSA claim is terminated and any outstanding payment issued to the claimant.

If a person’s temporary work ends and they wish to re-claim JSA within 26 weeks of the last day of a previous award and providing there has been no change to their circumstances, Jobcentre Plus has a streamlined process known as Rapid Reclaim/Reclaim Gather to ensure claims are dealt with quickly. Additionally, all claimants can be considered for a Short Term Benefit Advance at the start of any new claim.

Jobseekers engaged on work experience arranged through their Jobcentre still continue to receive their benefit uninterrupted, provided they continue to satisfy the conditions of entitlement.

Universal Credit helps to ensure people are better off in work than on benefits and abolishes the limit to the number of hours someone can work each week. A claimant’s UC payment adjusts automatically according to the number of ours worked. As claimants increase their hours their UC payment will gradually reduce, ensuring they are always better of in work.

We want to ensure that we minimise the administrative burden on claimants so that those who move off Universal Credit on a temporary basis can return to it quickly and easily as possible. The Universal Credit re-claims and re-award processes allow this to happen for certain claimants when they become re-entitled to Universal Credit within 6 months of a previous Universal Credit claim ending by re-using information already held on the claimant as part of their previous Universal Credit claim.

The re-claim and re-award processes also ensure that these claimants have a shorter wait until they are paid Universal Credit by re-instating the previous assessment period from the claimant’s previous Universal Credit award.