- Online handbooks
- Articles
- Tools and templates
- Legal test cases
- Further information
- Early Warning System
- eLearning
Online handbooks
Welfare Benefits and Tax Credits Handbook (for subscribers):
Mental Health and Benefits Handbook:
Benefits for Students in Scotland Handbook:
Articles
The most recent articles relating to universal credit (UC) from our Welfare Rights Bulletin (WRB):
- Not finding fault: any ground revisions (August 2024)
- Tax credits after pension age – where now? (August 2024)
- LCWRA and migration to UC (June 2024)
- National insurance credits for limited capability for work (June 2024)
- UC: claims and defects (April 2024)
- The transitional element in practice – an update (April 2024)
- Right to reside after AT (April 2024)
- Ever increasing: conditionality and sanctions (February 2024)
- DWP’s Targeted Case Review (February 2024)
- Refugees, UC and the DWP (February 2024)
- Extra! Extra! Transitional SDP element additions (February 2024)
- A guide to dignity? (December 2023)
- 'Backdating' and managed migration to UC (December 2023)
- The transitional element in practice (December 2023)
- Managing with migration to UC? (October 2023)
- You reap what you code (August 2023)
- Managed migration – moving to universal credit (August 2023)
- Untidy tenancies: still a mess (August 2023)
- UC childcare costs – onwards and upwards? (August 2023).
Tools and templates
Our universal credit tools include a tool to generate step-by-step instructions for your client explaining how to find and download information from their online universal credit account:
and tools which help you draft mandatory reconsideration requests and help you check your UC work-related requirements (for subscribers):
- Universal credit work capability assessment: mandatory reconsideration
- Checking your universal credit work-related requirements
- Universal credit sanctions: mandatory reconsideration
Check our other universal credit tools and appeal submission and letter templates:
Legal test cases
Some of our recent test cases:
- A Norwegian national with pre-settled status has been held to have a qualifying right to reside for the purposes of a joint claim for UC both as a self-employed person (on account of her having taken steps to set herself up as self employed at the date of her claim for UC) and as a self-sufficient person: SSWP v VB and AD [2024] UKUT 212 (AAC), 13 August 2024.
- Destitute EU nationals with pre-settled status can rely on EU Charter of Fundamental Rights to obtain UC: SSWP v AT (AIRE Centre and IMA Intervening) [2023] EWCA Civ 1307, 8 November 2023. The Supreme Court refused the SSWP's application for permission to appeal this decision on 7 February 2024.
- Following our successful test case regarding universal credit advances for those awaiting a national insurance number, amending regulations came into force on 1 April 2024 which reverse its effect, see: R (Bui) v SSWP [2023] EWCA Civ 566, 25 May 2023.
- There is no requirement to request backdating before a claim to universal credit is determined: AM v SSWP (UC) [2022] UKUT 242 (AAC), 1 September 2022.
Our other test cases:
Further information
Our UK-wide pages on UC
- Universal credit and sanctions
- Tax credits - moving on to universal credit
- Universal credit - the basics
Our Scottish factsheets and pages on UC:
Early Warning System
Our Early Warning System (EWS) bulletins for England and Wales cover:
- The limited capability for work related activity element - when it should start (July 2023)
- Problems with the UC child element for multiple children (March 2023)
The EWS gathers information and evidence on the impact of changes to the benefit system. Send us details of cases:
eLearning
Our free eLearning courses for advisers with existing benefit knowledge:
- Universal credit and backdating
- Moving home and the UC housing cost element
- Migrating to UC and the severe disability premium
- Mixed-age couples
Our free introductory level eLearning: