Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what recent estimate she has made of the number of people in (a) Cardiff South and Penarth, (b) the Vale of Glamorgan and (c) Wales that have waited more than 6 weeks to receive benefit payments in the latest period for which figures are available.

For Universal Credit New Claims no claimant has to go five weeks without receiving support, as advances, worth up to 100 per cent of a claimant’s indicative award, are available, if required and a two week ‘transitional housing payment’ is available to those claimants who were receiving Housing Benefit before they moved onto Universal Credit.

In many cases where full payment is not made on time, it is due to unresolved issues such as: claimants not accepting their Claimant Commitment or passing identity checks, or having outstanding verification issues, such as housing costs and self-employed earnings. In order to support claimants to claim, we have taken steps to improve verification processes. For example, we have listened to feedback and built processes into the system to make it easier and quicker for people to verify their housing costs, for example through the landlord portal.

The table below shows the number and proportion of UC New Claims where full payment/part payment was made within 6 weeks of the claim being submitted.

These figures relate to New Claims where the first payment was due in November 2018.