Oldham Council urges Universal Credit rethink

Universal Credit

Oldham Council leaders have met with Department of Work and Pensions officials to urge a rethink on Universal Credit (UC).

Councillor Abdul Jabbar, Deputy Leader of Oldham Council, met officials from Job Centre Plus earlier this week to express his concern about the under-fire policy.

No promises were made during the meeting but Councillor Jabbar said he hoped the pressure applied by one of the local authorities forced to lead the rollout – along with the other concerns that have been raised across the country, including in Parliament during an Opposition Day debate on Wednesday – would lead to change.

Councillor Jabbar said: “Oldham has been badly affected by the shambolic rollout of UC which is a punitive policy which actively targets the poorest in our society and makes them poorer.

“We now have more than 7,000 UC claimants in Oldham so the impact of that is huge.

“Many of them have faced waits of up to six weeks to receive any money, during which time they literally have had no form of income.

“To leave people in that situation not only affects the individual badly, causing issues like rent arrears, food and fuel poverty and homelessness, it also contributes to wider societal problems like crime, health problems and child safeguarding issues.

“The Government are literally putting lives at risk with this policy and it has to stop.”

Since the full rollout in April 2017, Oldham Council officials have been striving to support applicants as well as carrying out research, logging statistics in relation to UC and trying to measure the impact.

A wide range of information and advice materials have been published with staff even going as far as handing business cards to claimants at the Job Centre urging them to apply for additional support like Council Tax Reduction and Free School Meals (if they have children) and running a radio advertising campaign.

Advisers are spending an average of one hour and ten minutes with each person to help guide them through the application process as well as offering budgeting and computer use support because applications must be completed exclusively online.

They also ranked the level of support residents needed with the complex application process to evaluate how difficult it was for them to claim.

Ranking from one to four (one being no support and four being intensive support) they found that most residents needed intensive support with only 23 needing low levels of support and almost 500 needing a lot of help.

Oldham’s Foodbank, meanwhile, has seen a 77% spike in demand in the last two years while Citizens Advice Bureau have also reported a spike in enquiries.

The main issue though is the six-week delay before receiving their first payment.

Councillor Jabbar said: “This is the key problem,.

“If you leave the poorest people in society with no money for six weeks and nothing to fall back on, you’re simply giving people no chance to survive, prosper and live a healthy life.

“Again, I would urge the Government to stop and think again.”