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Q&A: Universal credit and the benefits overhaul
The first trial of universal credit - a new payment that marks the biggest overhaul of the benefits system since the 1940s - is being launched on Monday. Potentially, the change will affect nearly six million people. Yet, the first pilot of the system will be confined to a tiny number of new claimants at a jobcentre in Ashton-under-Lyne, in Greater Manchester. So how will the changes eventually affect you, and what can you do to prepare for them?
What is the idea behind this?
The overhaul of benefits has been driven by Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith who argues that too many people are trapped on benefits.
He says the changes are designed to make work pay, instead of people seeing their income drop by moving off benefits and into low-paid work. It is also a bid to simplify the system by merging a string of working-age benefits and tax credits into one single payment, called universal credit. This is supposed to reduce the amount of fraud and error that hits the benefits system amounting to billions of pounds a year.
How will it work?
Six working-age benefits will be merged into one. So, those receiving income-based jobseeker's allowance, income-related employment and support allowance, income support, child tax credit, working tax credit and housing benefit will receive a single universal credit payment.....Read more here:
BBC News - QA: Universal credit and the benefits overhaul
AAD Blog updates since:
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Universal Credit benefit reforms 'threatened by IT system' - allaboutFORUMS
Social sector tenants will be responsible for paying landlords direct under Universal Credit - allaboutFORUMS
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The rollout of the government’s new benefits system Universal Credit has been called “extraordinarily poor” in a report by the Public Accounts Committee (PAC). Its report on the early progress of Universal Credit revealed that much of the £425m spent so far on the programme is likely to be written off, including £140m worth of IT assets. Margaret Hodge, chair of the Committee of Public Accounts, said: “The management of the programme has been alarmingly weak.....Read more here