12th
Jun 2015
Overall Universal Credit has in principle been welcomed by the majority of the UK, or as it should be said by its workers.
There have been many cases of private renting landlords having to evict tenants for not paying their rent as suddenly they are in control of all of their own finances, rather than having bills paid direct.
Over the next few months cases of non-payment will certainly increase as the government is taking on a tougher stance with job seekers in the form of the “Claimant Commitment”. This is in effect a personal agreement drawn up between the jobseeker and the DWP that obliges the person to stick to their part of the deal, to receive their benefits. This includes, sending out so many CV’s to prospective employers, attending weekly appointments, improving their job seeking skills and committing to 34 hours of job search activity or community work.
In theory this all sounds fair enough, however within the Commitment there are sanctions which will affect all landlords. If a job seeker fails to stick to their Claimant Commitment they will automatically lose one month’s worth of benefits, if they continue along this path then for their second offense they will be liable for three months loss of benefits. If they offend for a third time they will have their benefits suspended for a much longer term and could even be stopped from ever being able to claim money again.
Richard Merrick of PIMS, says: “Over 95% of the time on the help line is spent advising our members on evictions. With the introduction of Universal Credit for jobseekers we have seen an upsurge of requests for assistance on this matter.”
Merrick also added: “ Duncan Smith has attempted to limit child tax credits to the first two children only, he also wanted to cap housing benefit for the Under 25s however Cameron has vetoed both of these proposals........but for how long?”
In the July budget Osborne will be announcing the new benefits’ caps as he is planning to take £12billion of the bill. It has already been muted that family or lone parents’ benefits will be reduced from £26,000 by nearly £3,000.
Richard Merrick said: “The reduction could cause many more evictions and we advise our members that for damage limitation’s sake, just consider how many months’ rent may not be paid because of the new cap.
“It is a hard question to ask yourself and the best course of action may be to have a chat with your tenants and see how it will affect them.”
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