Government Publishes Universal Credit Timetable

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Whilst the topic itself is not strictly payroll-related, this is newsworthy simply for the fact that the implementation and future success of Universal Credits is affected so greatly by the success of RTI.  As already detailed, Universal Credits will eventually replace Income Support, income-based Job Seeker’s Allowance, income-related Employment and Support Allowance, Housing Benefit, Child Tax Credit and Working Tax Credit.

Work and Pensions Secretary Ian Duncan Smith set out the Government’s timetable for moving 12 million people to the new Universal Credit benefit by 2017, starting October 2013.  He said ‘From October 2013 it will replace the current costly, outdated process with a digital system, which will be simpler to use and make work pay for hundreds of thousands of people across the UK.’

In their Briefing Note, published 01 November, the DWP identifies the three main ways that people will move onto the new benefit in the phased approach:

1. New Claims – from people that would otherwise have claimed one of the redundant benefits
2. Natural Changes – moves to Universal Credit will happen when an individual undergoes a change of circumstances that would have triggered a review of the redundant benefit
3. Managed Changes – this will be for people with existing benefit claims with no change of circumstances and simply a transfer of a legacy benefit claim to the new Universal Credit

It is worth noting that this Briefing Note introduces the acronym UC, which the author had not seen mentioned before.  Also, note that UC is a household benefit rather than a benefit for an individual within a household.

Phasing is proposed as follows:

Phase 1 – October 2013 to April 2014

• New Claims will receive UC instead of the old benefits
• Natural Changes will start

Phase 2 – April 2014 to End 2015

• Managed Changes will start from April ’14 plus remaining Natural Changes

Phase 3 – End ‘2015 – End 2017

• Remaining households

Further Information

• Ian Duncan Smith Press Release 01 November 2011
• Briefing Note – Managing the build-up of claims to Universal Credit

Tags: Credit timetable, Universal Credits

This entry was posted on Saturday, November 5th, 2011 at 09:30 and is filed under benefits. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.