Universal Credit claimants might get further £25 every week

Jul 12, 2023 at 6:38 PM
Universal Credit claimants might get further £25 every week

if a top-up cost introduced in through the COVID-19 pandemic is reinstated.

An further £20 every week cost was purchased through the coronavirus lockdown and was later scrapped.

Now SNP MP David Linden is looking for the uplifted to be reinstated and at the next price of £25 every week.

He stated in Parliament: “Rather than offering one-off payments to shore up struggling families’ incomes, the DWP should reverse the damaging policies that are impacting the most vulnerable people.

“It should reinstate the Universal Credit uplift at £25 per week and, of course, extend it to legacy benefits.”

He said the top-up payment should be extended to those on disability benefits who missed out on the payment during the pandemic.

Research from the Institute for Fiscal Studies says found scrapping the top-up may have pushed 100,000 people into absolute poverty in 2022/2023.

People on Universal Credit and other means-tested benefits received a £650 payment over the last financial year.

A similar payment of £900 is going out this tax year in three instalments. The first £301 payment has already gone out with the second instalment of £300 to arrive in people’s bank accounts in autumn 2023. The final payment of £299 will go out in spring 2024.

Mr Linden also said: “The Joseph Rowntree Foundation’s newest value of residing tracker discovered that 5.7 million low-income households are having to chop down or skip meals as a result of they don’t have sufficient cash for meals, whereas the quantity going with out gadgets reminiscent of meals, heating and fundamental toiletries has remained at about seven million for greater than a yr – all of that within the sixth largest financial system on this planet.”

There has been some aid for Britons in current weeks as vitality payments went down from the beginning of July.

The Ofgem worth cap went down from the beginning of the month with common payments for a typical family falling from £2,500 a yr to £2,074 a yr.

The normal allowance for Universal Credit is:

  • Single below 25: £292.11 (up from £265.31 per thirty days)
  • Single 25 or over: £368.74 (up from £334.91 per thirty days)
  • Joint claimants each below 25: £458.51 (up from £416.45 per thirty days)
  • Joint claimants, one or each 25 or over: £578.82 (up from £525.72 per thirty days).

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