Unemployed must wait for benefits

UP to 39,000 newly-unemployed North-West residents — including 1,394 in Oldham — are facing a five-week wait for financial support because of controversial new welfare reforms.


Currently, most workers who lose their job have to wait two weeks before they get their first benefit payment.

But under new Universal Credit rules for assessing unemployment claims, most will face a wait of more than five weeks before they get any financial support. This could mean going two months into rent arrears before any cash arrives.

Across the UK, almost 300,000 will be hit each month by the long wait — yet a poll by YouGov for the TUC has revealed that fewer than one in seven (13 per cent) say they have heard of the plans.

Seventy per cent say that they would be worried when asked to imagine losing their job and not being entitled to receive any benefit payments for five weeks.

More than half say it makes them think less favourably of the Government’s welfare reforms. Across the North-West, Lancashire is the most affected local authority where more than 5,000 each month are expected to be hit.
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