Our interviews show that claimants did not have the information they needed or wanted to understand how moving to UC would affect them. Such misinformation and misunderstanding are likely to be reasons some people are not moving to UC despite having a strong financial incentive to do so.
It’s right that benefits are uprated as usual but this should never have been in doubt and legislation mandating inflationary increases is needed as a basic protection for living standards. Struggling families have been worrying themselves sick for months about whether an unmanageable income cut was coming in order to provide the government with a rabbit-out-of-the-hat moment.
A family’s ability to get universal credit is often based not on their actual circumstances, but on a fictional version of their circumstances. Welfare rights worker Carri Swann explains.
We welcome the commitment from the Scottish government that tackling child poverty is a top priority. Scottish government policies are working. However, soaring inflation and real terms UK benefit cuts in 2022 mean the gap between family incomes and the minimum cost of raising a child is widening horribly. It is more important than ever that all budget decisions are developed through a child poverty lens to understand the direct and indirect impacts on low-income families.
Frances Ryan, Welfare Rights Worker at CPAG in Scotland, takes a look at ‘adult disability payment’ (ADP), a new disability benefit for working-age people who live in Scotland.
The DWP has just confirmed that it's pressing ahead with managed migration (the process by which people on the old ‘legacy’ benefits will move to universal credit (UC)). Here are six reasons for alarm as the government forges ahead with its plans to move 1.7m people by the end of 2024.
An update to the report we published at the beginning of 2021 highlighting that delays carrying out assessments for disability benefits meant that many disabled people were not receiving or were losing support intended to help them meet the additional costs of their disability.
This report highlights that delays carrying out assessments for benefits mean that many disabled people are not receiving, or are losing support, intended to help them meet the additional costs of ill health or disability.