The Salvation Army today welcomed the speech made by Secretary of
State for Work and Pensions, Amber Rudd, on Universal Credit but
the church and charity says there is still the need to see more
initiatives that will enable people to apply for UC more
effectively. Matthew Sowemimo, Head of Public Affairs and
Social Policy at The Salvation Army said: “Both the content
and the tone of Amber Rudd’s speech are extremely encouraging.
However, we believe that the Secretary of...Request free trial
The Salvation Army today welcomed the speech made by Secretary of
State for Work and Pensions, , on Universal Credit but the
church and charity says there is still the need to see more
initiatives that will enable people to apply for UC more
effectively.
Matthew Sowemimo, Head of Public Affairs and Social Policy at The
Salvation Army said:
“Both the content and the tone of ’s speech are extremely
encouraging. However, we believe that the Secretary of State must
go further still if the government is really to resolve universal
credit’s present problems, which are causing unnecessary hardship
and anxiety to so many of the people using our services.
“Whilst we fully agree that people need the option to receive
payments more regularly once their Universal Claim has been
established, it is also clear that people should not be required to
wait five weeks for their first payment. For many of the people The
Salvation Army works with, five weeks is still far too long and
causing great financial strain. The only way to resolve this issue
consistently and equitably is by reducing the wait for a first
payment further for all claimants.
“The Secretary of State is right to say the system must treat
people as individuals. However in many of our services we are
seeing an increasing number of people who are struggling to access
the social security system at all because of issues engaging with a
system that is increasingly ‘digital by default’.”
To enable more people to access Universal Credit more effectively,
The Salvation Army would like to see:
· home visits to claimants,
· greater advice to work coaches so that
they can detect people with major support needs
· helping people make their online
applications
Today’s speech by contained a number of significant
announcements, including an end to previous plans to
retrospectively apply a two-child benefit cap to new claimants, as
well as confirmation that the secretary of state will delay a vote
on whether to begin transferring three million existing benefit
claimants onto universal credit, as part of a process known as
managed migration.
The Salvation Army is encouraged that the Department for Work and
Pensions has recognised concerns about Universal Credit and that it
will now run a much smaller pilot so that any issues with the
process of managed migration can be identified and resolved before
significant numbers of people are moved onto the new system. As the
Secretary of State has said, it will be important that the outcome
of the pilots are reported to parliament so there can be a full
discussion of the learnings from them.
The Salvation Army also welcomes ’s acknowledgement that more needs
to be done to ensure private sector landlords concerns about the
payment of Universal Credit to claimants are satisfactorily
addressed.
