Universal Credit

Welcome to our revised page (updated in April 2023) dedicated to Universal Credit (UC). This is now fully rolled out across the UK  for all new claims for the main means tested benefits claimed by people of “working age” (from 16 to 66), although it may not be until 2029 that UC will have fully taken over from the six “legacy benefits” that UC eventually replaces.

The reason for this page is to help you deal with  UC’s particular  tendency to create new barriers and difficulties for all claimants, but particularly for people living with a mental health issue. When you are facing difficulties taking in information or working through benefit  processes,  you may have an extra need for a benefit that is calm, welcoming, safe, reliable and that seems to know what it is doing.  And too often UC doesn’t quite manage that 😦

UC works in a very new way for those more used to the old ways of benefits. Now some people do actually find that in time they prefer UC’s ways,  but they do take getting used to, if only because they are a bit new and different. And for many people this is yet another in a long line of switches to a new benefit, with lot of worries, fears and misunderstandings about what UC is about, when you will actually need to get to grips with it and what’s involved in making that UC claim and how to keep it going.

What is Universal Credit (UC) ?

UC  is a not so new benefit that has been around since April 2013, but has only more recently become relevant for many people who are not active jobseekers. UC  will eventually replace six of the main “working age” means tested benefits, namely: Income Support, Income-related ESA, Income-based JSA, Housing Benefit, Working Tax Credit and Child Tax Credit. These six benefits are often called the “legacy benefits”

So, UC is  not taking over the  benefits world and doesn’t mean a change to any other benefits you might be getting, but UC will eventually replace these six “legacy benefits” and already has if you are making a new claim. Other benefits stay as they are:

• other means tested benefits such as Pension Credit, Council Tax Reduction, Local Welfare Payments (and equivalents in Wales, Scotland and N.Ireland) and health benefits stay outside UC
• as do all the non-means tested benefits. : e.g. Personal Independence Payment , Child Benefit. The contributory versions of Employment and Support Allowance and Jobseeker’s Allowance remain outside UC and are open to new claims

However,  the switch to UC has been delayed. In the first plans, UC was to take over from legacy benefits by October 2017, but that got pushed back as DWP wrestled with the rescue of the IT system. They didn’t want to admit or set a new date but eventually came clean with the scale of the problems and planned for the end of 2024.

But then came the pandemic and lockdown and UC did amazingly to cope with 2 million new claims over 5 weeks and issues and timescales for migration to UC went on the back burner. The latest timings announced in the Autumn Financial Statement of November 2022 is that most switching of people still on legacy benefits will happen between April 2024 and the end of 2025. However, if you just claim Income-related ESA (perhaps with Housing Benefit) you won’t now have to switch until April 2028 and 2029:

• So if you are one of the 2.6 million people still getting a “legacy benefit”,  it may be a long time before you do have to switch over to UC. You can choose to switch to UC at any time and at the time of writing may be told you need to switch because of a change of circumstances wh, when in fact you may still have a choice. Do get advice first before making a claim for UC which will close down your right to legacy benefits for ever; there is no going back. It could be that a switch to UC as soon as possible is a good move, but do get advice about timing and preparing for that switch. Or it could be that you are best sticking with “legacy benefits for as long as possible; at least until you are offered a managed migration which has extra preotection against any financial losses from the switch. e.

• But Yes, if you are making entirely new claims for means tested help in “working age” , then that has meant a claim for UC ever since the  last parts of the UK switched to “full service” UC back in December 2018.  That switch meant that you cannot usually start an entirely  new claim for any of the legacy benefits and so need to start a claim for UC instead.

Does a switch to UC mean yet another health assessment?

People with mental health issues have been bearing the brunt of welfare reform – and the expensive and failing system of assessments – for many years now :

• the switch from Incapacity Benefit /I ncome Support to Employment and Support Allowance (ESA) – and the  revival of re-assessments under the  Work Capability Assessments, that were put on hold during the Covid pandemic

• the switch from Disability Living Allowance (DLA) to Personal Independence Payment (PIP) – where people with mental health difficulties have found that they are 2.4  times more likely to lose out than those with other health and disability issues.

That unfairness arises because of a general issue – in all such non-specialist health assessments – of a lack of awareness and lack of time to probe around the less visible and less easy to assess conditions – such as mental health.  In PIP’s cases – and despite Court challenges improving matters – there is still some mental health discrimination built into the design of the PIP test itself.

So the thought of having to undergo yet another assessment as you switch to UC is causing a lot of worry, But the good news is that – for those moving over from Income-related ESA to UC  –  the answer to “Will I need to go through thas all over again?” is  NO, you do NOT have to go through yet another health assessment just because you switch to UC.

Your existing ESA “limited capability” status is valid for UC,  as both benefits use exactly the same Work Capability Assessment (WCA) to determine if they accept you as being too unwell for work. And if so, in which of two groups you are placed..

And all that knowledge, resources and advice around getting through the WCA and the difficult task of expressing the difficulties you face, is out there and just as useful whether you are going through the WCA through an ESA claim or a new UC one.

The problems that are there end to be more in UC’s understanding and administration of that same test – and in much much else besides. It is here that UC’s design and practises are proving so difficult .

And that’s why UC needs a special page on this website to re-assure you with the good news, when things are no longer as bad as you may fear or have heard , but also to explain the too many pitfalls that are about  and to suggest ways around them.

What’s been the trouble with UC?

Whileit is customary, in the interests of fairness and balance to say that UC  started off life with genuinely good intentions and widespread support, it has failed to live up to that promise in a spectacular way, according to repeated Court judgements, and reports by the Parliamentary Work and Pensions Select Committee and the National Audit Office.

The initial UC response has been a culture of denial of all problems and stating as fact that no change was possible. But big changes have proved possible  – and real improvements to UC made – but only as a result of serious pressure, media attention and taking the DWP to Court, with  every step resisted by the DWP perhaps for fear of upsetting the computer or the timetable for rolling out UC.

So, UC can be uniquely chaotic and dysfunctional, with a very different organisational culture pressed from an ivory tower by a uniquely political DWP on a mission.   Of course all benefits seem to start off  life in a woeful state of chaos and unpreparedness, but they usually settle down  after a while.  But UC is rather different:

• it is ill thought and poorly designed in too many areas,  with all the joined up thinking and claims for UC largely focusing on UC as a sort of  “turbocharged JSA with digital knobs on” -. Yet, eventually,  only 2% of UC claimants will be active jobseekers.

• UC is badly applied in practise, with struggling, overworked – and not always fully informed – staff, sometimes appearing to make it up as they go along, jettisoning legal duties to explain decisions clearly, or to act on requests for reconsideration.

• UC comes with a very different organisational culture based on you having more “claimant responsibility”, but with signs of some abandonment of the Department’s own, big gaps in how the benefits system works and feeds into UC and a confusion that UC’s aim of greater flexibility does not mean that it is not bound by its own rules and due legal process.

The aim of this page s not to make people unduly anxious about having to deal with UC. It is very true, that many – and possibly even most – claims can go smoothly and your encounters with UC go well. It’s just that there are too many common, and repeated problem areas:.

UC’s problem areas in practise.

The practical upshot is that  UC – in its current form – does present real extra barriers and problem areas to those living with mental health issues. For example:

• even when all goes well,  you have to learn and get to grips with UC’s deliberately very different way of doing benefits.

• you may get duff advice about whether you need to switch over to UC now or not, when too often you have a choice.

• it’s a very different online world of claiming and keeping your account going – some people like the new way of doing things, but for others it can feel very strange and difficult. DWP are now funding Citizens Advice to help you start off your claim but they are not funding any further support during your claim. The justification for extra demands that UC wants to make of claimants was based on a whole range of extra support – that was to be called Universal Support – for those who might struggle with these new demands. But the full Universal Support scheme never happened.

• you may be wrongly told that you have to undergo a Work Capability Assessment on switching over to UC from ESA. You do not

• if you first become unwell on UC and do have to go through the WCA, you can’t always depend on UC to get that process right and as a result end up with significant delays compared to ESA. You might not look forward to ya WCA, but once done it can mean extra money.

• extra amounts for sickness and rent can too easily be missing from your first payment of UC

• there are no extra adult disability elements in UC

• basic understandings around  – e.g. how carers benefits relate to UC or how to deal with a special rules claim for the most unwell – are too often lacking within the way UC operates

• UC fails to offer the same safe space or financial incentives to try work when you are ready. It does offer some, but not to the same degree or in as clearly separated a way as ESA “permitted work”

• you may have picked up the message that everyone is a jobseeker on UC and you know you couldn’t cope with that.  That is not true, but the myth is rooted in daft pronouncements from ministers,  the DWP and UC’s first 4 years experience as being a benefit only open to jobseekers.  UC now has the full range of different work requirement levels that existed across the legacy benefits, including the  equivalents of the ESA work related activity group (that requires some engagement in work focussed interviews and activity) and the support group (which doesn’t require any.

• you may be very worried about surviving for the 5-weeks wait for your first UC payment  – there is much better help available now than whwn UC started, although the computer said “No” to getting rid of that 5 week wait altogether.

• you may be worried about sanctions. Unfortunately they still continue – with as little evidence of any effective purpose – and a rise in the ones that used to apply to ESA. Always  get advice and challenge a sanction.

• you may be worried about getting rent payments sorted and not getting into arrears . There are ways in which you can help UC get this right and on time, but they still have a lot of learning to do.

This page is here to help 🙂

The aim of further postings, resources , and links from this page is not to just have a go at UC 🙂 .

Rather it is to clear up some myths and offer some re-assurance, to offer reliable information and practical resources in key areas and suggest ways round the too many pitfalls that UC currently has .

Yes, you can find the latest full information on UC – as well as PIP and ESA – in the Big Book of Benefits and Mental Health 2021-23 – see details on the page  here. But not everyone can afford one or has access to a copy.

So this page is about sharing some of this information and resources with no charge or obligation 🙂

Some useful UC resources:

We explain a little bit more about how these resources work on the UC resources sub page that you get to by clicking here. But for now we just highlight what we offer

• Survival a claim for UC : Top Tips  A walk through some of the common problem areas and what you can do to reduce the risk of hitting snags or tips if you do.- available by clicking the link here 

• To claim or not claim UC – A general flowchart of when a change in circumstances might lead to a need to switch from “legacy benefits to UC. The DWP often get this wrong – please click here

• Table of changes examples of changes in circumstances and whether you have to switch to UC, whether you can’t and when there’s a choice .The DWP often get this wrong – please click here

• Calculation Sheet 2023-24 – Gives you all the information to hand to work out your entitlement to UC  – please click here

In that way, we hope to make some contribution to reducing the toll that UC may take on people’s finances, mental well being and lives. It’s not much, but we hope in time that new  posts, links and materials from this page will build into something useful.

With warmest wishes for the bestest of luck. 🙂

Tom