Disabled people who receive any kind of tax credits will only have until next April to transfer onto universal credit, the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) confirmed this week.
The department announced this week that all claimants of “legacy” income-related benefits who receive tax credits – including child tax credits – will have three months from when they receive a migration notice to lodge a claim for universal credit.
But it also warned that all tax credit “customers” would have to move onto universal credit by 5 April next year, when tax credits will close for good.
Many of these claimants will receive child tax credits as well as other “legacy” benefits such as income-related employment and support allowance (ESA), jobseeker’s allowance or income support.
Although all these legacy claimants will be given three months to make a claim for universal credit, DWP has previously made it clear that it will extend the deadline for individual claimants if they can provide a good reason.
But those deadlines will not extend past 5 April 2025.
DWP made it clear to Disability News Service (DNS) this week that all such claimants – including many who receive both ESA and child tax credits – would have to meet the 5 April deadline.
But DWP also confirmed that the migration process would be slower for those not receiving any form of tax credits.
It said it did not plan to finish issuing migration notices to all claimants of legacy benefits until December 2025, with a final deadline for all households to move to universal credit by March 2026, about 18 months away.
Sir Stephen Timms, Labour’s social security and disability minister, called on claimants of legacy benefits to not “delay with responding to your migration notice”.
He said: “We are committed to ensuring a smooth transition and customers will have the full support of DWP staff to help manage this change.”
The continuing push to complete the final migration of legacy benefit claimants onto universal credit comes as concerns continue to mount about the new system’s safety.
This week, work and pensions secretary Liz Kendall released 31 DWP research papers that were “sat on” by the last government.
They include research, likely to be about two years old, which showed that those eligible for universal credit who chose not to claim it “fear that UC would result in them being pushed into work they are not ready for”.
The concerns about universal credit include reports by coroners following two deaths of claimants that were both linked to flaws in the system, and particularly the pressure it puts on people in mental distress and those with mental ill-health.
The PCS union has described universal credit as a “dangerously flawed system” in which “the most vulnerable continue to slip through its cracks”.
DNS reported in May how a survey by the Commons work and pensions committee – then chaired by Sir Stephen – found two-thirds of DWP staff still do not have enough time to deal with safeguarding concerns “carefully” and “correctly”, despite years of deaths of benefit claimants linked with the department’s actions and failings.
And last month, Sir Stephen told DNS at Labour’s annual conference that there were “features of universal credit which are problematic, and they need to be fixed”.
He said there were problems with universal credit that DNS was “rightly highlighting, and that you have highlighted very consistently over a lengthy period now and have frequently been denied by the department, but they have carried on happening”.
He added: “I think you’ve been onto something very important.”
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