Welfare Reform

From 1 January 2019 new claimants of Universal Credit will have access to a contingency fund without having to first apply for an advance payment. 

The contingency fund was set up to assist those who had moved to Universal Credit, following explicit recommendations in the Evason Report for a fund "...to make emergency payments where hardship occurs as a result difficulties which are not due to any fault on the part of the claimant." 

Housing Rights is one of over 100 members of the Cliff Edge NI Coalition, who have come together to highlight their shared concerns about the potential ‘cliff edge’ of the end of the welfare reform mitigations in March 2020, and their fears about a range of new welfare challenges which have emerged since the original mitigations were introduced.

The Coalition’s briefing paper outlines our key messages:

As required by the Welfare Reform Order, the Department for Communities has published its report on the operation of elements of the welfare reform mitigations package for the year 2017/2018. The report shows that:

The Department for Communities has released statistics covering the application of the benefit cap. Of the 1160 households subject to the benefit cap in July 2019, 530 had their benefits reduced by at least £50 a week as a result of this policy.