My Universal Credit Claim Journey

This started two weeks ago after receiving letters that I had accrued rent arrears of nearly £1200 and after a visit to local council offices I was told that my HB had been cancelled and now had to apply for UC.

I have been very lucky that my housing association have helped me out this time around over the arrears but what I can pay as rent can't be decided until my UC kicks which luck will have it, will be on Xmas Eve!!

I am hoping a discretionary payment claim made on my behalf by my housing support officer ahs been successful and will clear the arrears .

Anyway I have read many reports of people having to wit until January for first payment of UC and landlords exploiting that to the max allowing rent arrears to accrue for families and individual and while I was doing my application online (as you do) I had January in mind for first payment hen I hit the buffers of doing my identification bit online it didn't work so I spent two weeks on the phone calling the hotline to get that done and Thursday I managed to get through on one option only to be told that I had come through the wrong option!!
I politely told the manager on the phone that I felt the phone system for the hotline was a complete mess and she ACTUALLY agreed with me!!

interview was last Friday at J/C - in and out in less than 10 mins flat,

no further interviews are required unless circumstances change, i.e. loss off job or change of job, then I have to go back. By far the biggest loss for me would the loss of my tax credit claim as it forms part of my UC claim and UC is based on 63% of earnings so that leaves me thinking that if you earn less one month due to illness or cut back hours you may get more the following month I am not sure There is a part on the rent section of the claim that asks if you wish rent to be paid directly to landlord and I clicked yes but was actually told at interview, that rent is actually MY responsibility!! That alone leaves me thinking, that HB should not have been made part of UC and should have been left completely alone as it always has been, then at least you knew that your housing association or landlord was been paid part of your rent through the benefit system and you had to pay your part. In any case with Govt thinking it is a clever idea to house all benefits under one roof and one single payment I actually feel it creates more flaws and leaves the system way more open to abuse by greedy landlords exploiting the loophole in payment being delayed and on the other side people who are working and already struggling to pay bills etc and essentially live on pretty much next to nothing if they have to also find the rent money. And there are the scroungers who live a blissful life knowing that they have no rent worries and are too damn lazy to even look for work!! The system should have pretty much caught these people out, but it does seem they live a charmed life because the J/C probably can't be arsed to investigate any one who is of that ilk even if a genuine person reports them and hurt scrounger cunts feelings!!
The other thing I was not advised at interview what my actual payment would be which leaves me on a limb in not being sure how much rent I have to pay!!

So I am hoping the payment on Xmas Eve that I get is correct and then I can sort out things with housing tomorrow. I have no real confidence that Amber Rudd will properly tackle the problems of UC head on and really tighten up the system yet if she does make changes I do not think the changes she may make will really make a difference to the chaos and mess of this flawed and ill - thought out idea has created any easier.

I do not know how many of us on here are affected by UC, but feel free to add your own experiences if you want to share them.

Just for you to think on..... J/C = Joke Club

Having also suffered a little at the government's hand in the past, I feel the grief you must be going through with those asswipes & jobsworths.

Anyone who has used the welfare system understands that at times there is a complete lack of common sense when it comes to dealing with peoples claims. Why does it always seem to be that for genuine claimants its like trying to get blood from a stone and for the professional scroungers there is a never ending supply of money?

^That is my biggest gripe with it all in trying to make it easier for genuine claimants and harder for the scroungers it seems that the balance is tipped more towards the scroungers and genuine hard up people are left to fend for themselves if the Government had thought it through much more thoroughly and ensured us there were no flaws or loopholes it probably would been a lot better.

^ Good idea for a thread by the way.

The idea behind Universal Credit, of uniting 6 benefits into one payment, seems great in principle. However when you look into the inept and incompetent way that the government approached it, you realise it wasn't such a good idea after all.

One of their biggest failings so far; as there will me more; is that in the areas they trialed this in first it failed, but still go on to introduce it to other areas nonetheless... pure madness.

(02-12-2018 17:28 )gunnar Wrote:  ^ Good idea for a thread by the way.

The idea behind Universal Credit, of uniting 6 benefits into one payment, seems great in principle.

Not unless you are the government in question and you're trying to cut money down.

To anyone claiming it, it's like abandoning 6 items of clothing and wearing a onesie instead. Any slim superficial advantage is lost to the overwhelming drawbacks.

To be perfectly honest, I think it has so many drawbacks , flaws it should ben left on paper for life, it has created way more problems than anyone envisaged and I think there is no real alternative to it from other parties as far as I can tell, none of the opposition parties are in apposition to offer an alternative or are willing to scrap it if they win power.

(02-12-2018 17:41 )kelly1066 Wrote:  One of their biggest failings so far; as there will me more; is that in the areas they trialed this in first it failed, but still go on to introduce it to other areas nonetheless... pure madness.

I'd like to know which areas it failed in and what they did - did they revert back to the tried and trusted formula? I think what it will eventually will come down to is that I may move back to my parents pay of the rent arrears with a one off payment from my private pension then close my bank account down get my wages paid into my parents account and I just sleep in their car and not set foot in their house. Or I get the UC people to send all my UC to the Housing association and it goes straight into my rent account and they then direct debit me for the outstanding balance of the rent so then I at least have something to live on and pay bills. In trying to be clever the govt is likely to end up facing riots and protest Poll Tax style that will be only way. they can be forced to scrap the damn thing. Yes, I agree welfare reform was needed, but this to me isn't how it should be done. It is about time MP's woke up and took a look around their constituencies and see what the real damage of years of austerity and now the implementation of UC is doing to those they serve and suddenly realise that the policy is not likely to solve reforms it will only create more widespread damage tear families apart and homelessness will simply go through the roof and that can not be allowed to happen. If that happened the country will never recover from the national debt problems it has simply because it will see less and less taxes being paid because more people will be on the streets and not contributing to the tax system through no fault of their own.

The biggest mistake I think they're making with this UC business; fiasco might be a better word?; is that they're also paying in Housing Benefits to the accounts of those claiming UC Benefits.

Imagine that both drug users & alcoholics are getting all that lovely money paid into their account, supposedly knowing they have to pay their landlord his rent, but in too much of a stupor to think straight? Where do you think that money is going to go before the end of the day? To the landlord, or to their habit?? The homeless situation will very soon be getting worse if I have any clue to the answer of that one simple question...??