Universal credit is ‘adding to homeless’

JON MACPHERSON

UNIVERSAL credit is contributing to an increase in homelessness in Hyndburn, council bosses have said.

The rollout of the system, which sees benefits paid directly to claimants rather than housing cash going straight into landlords’ pockets, has had an impact on the number of private properties available to people on benefits, a scrutiny meeting heard.

And housing advice and homelessness manager Denis Aldridge said it left the council fewer options in terms of rehousing people.

He said: “Universal credit is something the Homeless in Hyndburn forum has been monitoring since we knew it was coming. It’s very much high on the agenda.

“One of the issues we have identified is there is quite a lot of difficulty for homeless people to claim online because they don’t have ID and they don’t have mobile phones addresses.

“Delays in the receipt of payments continue to have an impact and agencies are continuing to have to give food parcels to people who can’t afford to eat.

“We have found there has been a reluctance from some private landlords to accept people on universal credit.

“This impacts on the ability of the council to rehome people in the private sector.”

Dave Mayner, regional director for Lancashire at social housing provider Onward Homes, agreed the system was causing problems.

“There’s no magic bullet for the impact of universal credit,” Mr Mayner said.

“And I’m confident in saying it will have a significant impact on our customers. We are doing what we can to limit that.”

Mark Hoyle, Hyndburn council’s head of housing and regeneration, said he was certain welfare changes had directly impacted the number of people sleeping rough in or email the borough. He said: “There have been a lot of welfare changes in recent years and in some respects it’s difficult to say how they have impacted on homelessness but there is no doubt there’s correlation between an increase in rough sleeping and welfare changes because that’s ongoing and it has impacted the most vulnerable people in our communities.”

Universal credit was rolled out in the borough earlier this year as part of the government’s benefits restructure.

The scheme incorporates income related jobseeker’s allowance, income related employment support allowance, housing benefit, working tax credit, child tax credit and income support.

The main changes include the credit will be paid directly to one person in the household each month and can only be claimed online.

Rent, which is included in the universal credit payment, became the responsibility of the claimant to pay their landlord.