Good morning

I’m delighted to confirm the following training courses, in both Glasgow & Edinburgh are available to book.

  1. Glasgow Course – 21st February in Tollcross Housing Association’s offices – How Universal Credit is contributing to rent arrears.
  2. Edinburgh Training Centre – Two courses covering
    1. a) Universal Credit’s impact on rent arrears with the other
    2. b) covering the latest developments in Managed Migration and Transition Protection
  3. The difference in Edinburgh’s price is entirely due to the Training Centre being a commercial organisation, which also provides all the catering.
  4. If there’s any Associations or Councils in Edinburgh, Dundee, Inverness or anywhere in GB, for that matter, willing to offer the use of their conference premises, at a reasonable charge or by accepting free places, that would be most welcome and substantially reduce costs of training.
  5. Each of the sessions can also be arranged in-house if that’s your preference. Plus, we have no difficulty with organisations sharing costs.

I recently provided an update on the Managed Migration timetable and how it would be conducted. Since then, Child Poverty Action Group (CPAG), has reported, in its latest members’ bulletin, that of the 118,000 claimants (mainly single) invited to claim Universal Credit via Migration Notices, between July 22 and August 2023, only 61,300 claimed by the deadline date and, of that number, 65% were awarded Transitional Protection (TP). The TP is figure is much higher than anticipated and may be due to DWP miscalculating the TP elemant.

It suggests – “The consequence of this is, claimants being managed migrated to UC and not receiving HB or Carers Allowance will have an indicative UC amount which underestimates – sometimes by a large amount – the eventual UC award they will receive. These people are therefore much more likely to get a transitional element or to get a higher transitional element – even if they would be better off on UC without a transitional element”.

If CPAG’s concerns are justified, and reflected across the country, this will ultimately result in large overpayments, caused by “official error” which, unlike the rules on Housing Benefit, would be recoverable from the affected claimants, evn though they’re caused by “official error”.

What CPAG describes in worrying and is something you may wish to highlight, both to frontline staff and customers, in your in-house news bulletins. It’s certainly likely to create more enquiries from concerned tenants, especially if they are overpaid and required to repay by DWP’s Debt Management team, which is punitive in its approach. Where payment of “housing costs” are paid direct, DWP has a habit of simply pursuing the landlord when that should NOT be the case.

I will endeavour to keep you updated. Meantime, I can be contacted on 07733 080 389 or bill@ucadvice.co.uk

Bill Irvine

UC Advice & Advocacy Ltd

www.ucadvice.co.uk