‘87% of Universal Credit due on time’

MORE Universal Credit claims will be paid on time and in full during the coronavirus crisis than usual, the Department for Work and Pensions has pledged.

Neil Couling, change director general and senior responsible owner for Universal Credit, said he is “confident” that the department is in “a very good place” to exceed the 87% of Universal Credit payments which, on average, were received fully and promptly before the pandemic.

But as the earliest claimants became able to see the first sum that will arrive in their bank accounts on April 22, a Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) spokeswoman warned that initial payments are “going to be an issue”, as some people “may be surprised that it is not as much as they were expecting”.

This would be due to any income or redundancy payments a claimant may have received affecting the amount they are entitled to, she said.

Asked whether 87% of claimants will be paid in full and on time, Mr Couling said: “I think we’ll do better than that, definitely.

“Looking ahead at the current estimates the system gives me at the moment, we’re already at the levels of payment that, as you said, there are in peacetime.

“So I think we’re going to do better than that, I’m really confident.”

He added that “you can never get to 100%” and admitted that people may think “that’s not quite what I was expecting” when they see their first payment total.

Pushed on his confidence, Mr Couling added: “We’ve cleared all the identity checks, we’ve cleared the verification checks. So I’m pretty bullish on this, I think we’re in a very good place”.

Mr Couling admitted his department is “climbing a really big mountain” but is in “good shape” ahead of the peak week.

“Next week, that’s the really peak week,” he said. “So we had about 270,000 claims in the first week of the pandemic, we had 540,000 roughly in the second week, then about 380,000, and last week was about 220,000. So that’s the kind of mountain we’ve got to go up. I’m increasingly confident we’ll do the half a million based on the rate at which we’re clearing the cases, how hard people are working across DWP and the extra resources.

“Be in no doubt... I would lay serious amounts of money, we’re going to get these claims done and it is our duty to get them done and everybody inside DWP is working their socks off to get this done.”

Mr Couling confirmed that the department has received 1.4 million Universal Credit claims, compared to the 220,000 normally filed in an average month, including “about three times the normal rate of claims for people who are self-employed”.

He added that the monthly assessment period for those who first submitted claims on March 16 has concluded and, from Wednesday, they “can see on their online account how much they are due and that will be paid on April 22”.

As of April 12, the department had already paid 513,000 advances, he said.

Mr Couling also revealed the department has recruited 20,000 extra processors, including diverting 10,000 workers, with plans to recruit 5,000 more.