The Work and Pensions Committee recently published the government response to its report titled Universal Credit: The wait for a first payment.
The report was published during October in a public plea against the lengthy time taken for the initial Universal Credit installment to be paid. Applicants for the social security payment are kept waiting five weeks for their claim to process.
Credit claims in Covid crisis
2020 saw the demand for Universal Credit (UC) soar, as businesses were forced to close and employees were either furloughed or made redundant. Claimaints increased during April last year by 1.2m people (40%) in just one month. This was almost 10 times the monthly increase of April 2019, and has only escalated since.
Many accountants will have been dealing with self employed individuals who have seen a significant fall in income or have found that they were not eligible for coronavirus support grants, such as the self employed income support scheme or the furlough scheme.
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