Call to increase child benefit to help those in urgent need

THE GOVERNMENT has been urged to sweep aside bureaucracy in order to ensure those hit hardest by financial insecurity caused by the coronavirus pandemic still “have money in their pockets”, after the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) received almost half a million benefits claims in just nine days.

Chief executive of Citizens Advice Sheffield, Clare Lodder, said it had seen an increase in calls from self-employed people, those who had seen their hours cut or lost their jobs entirely, and people worried about managing on low incomes as they face unexpected costs due to the lockdown.

She has called on the Government to do all they can to help those who have gone from “almost managing to almost destitute” as quickly as possible, and said one way of cutting through the bureaucracy that would help thousands of families would be to increase the basic child benefit, rather than rely on processing new claims for Universal Credit.

“Our main concern is how long it is going to take for the Government to put money into people’s pockets if it is not being put there by their employer,” she said.

“The Government should look at using existing routes to help people. It would be a lot easier to increase the level of child benefit than to process thousands of new Universal Credit claims.”

The unprecedented pressure and volume of new benefits claims has led to people reporting delays, being unable to get through on the phone and struggling to reach advisers. It comes as the DWP’s website, Understanding Universal Credit, received approximately 200,000 hits last week.

Yesterday DWP Permanent Secretary Peter Schofield said around 477,000 benefits claims have been “processed” since last week, with 105,000 being made for Universal Credit.