Below is details of help people can get in terms of applying for and navigating the new social security system, Universal Credit.
What is Universal Credit?
Universal Credit is a United Kingdom social security payment that is intended to simplify working-age benefits and to incentivise paid work. It is replacing and combining six means-tested benefits: income-based Employment and Support Allowance, income-based Jobseeker’s Allowance, and Income Support; Housing Benefit; and Working Tax Credit and Child Tax Credit.
In 2013 the new benefit began to be rolled out gradually to Jobcentres,[3] initially focusing on new claimants with the least complex circumstances: single adults without housing costs. [4] By October 2018, more than one million households were receiving the new benefit (seven million households are eventually expected to receive it, once it has been fully rolled out).
Criticism of Universal Credit
There were problems with the early strategic leadership of the project and with the IT system on which Universal Credit relies. Implementation costs, initially forecast to be around £2 billion, later grew to over £12 billion. More than three million recipients of the six older “legacy” benefits were expected to have transferred to the new system by 2017; but under current plans, the full move will not be completed before 2023. One specific concern is that payments are made monthly, with a waiting period of at least five weeks before the first payment, which can particularly affect claimants of Housing Benefit, leading to rent arrears.
Universal Credit has faced other criticism: the architect of Tax Credits, former Labour Chancellor and Prime Minister Gordon Brown, has warned that a hard-to-navigate application system and cuts to the value of the new payment for some groups of claimants risk bringing a million more children into poverty and adding to demand on food banks.
In January 2019 a planned parliamentary vote on moving three million recipients of older benefits onto Universal Credit was suspended pending the result of a pilot study of 10,000 recipients, whose old benefits will be stopped and who will have the opportunity to apply for Universal Credit.
Help With Universal Credit Claims –
Tower Hamlets Residents
Resident Support Outreach Sessions
Shamim Ahmed (Resident Support Outreach Officer)
Wednesday – Poplar Job Centre
Friday – Hoxton Job Centre
Karen Begum (Resident Support Outreach Officer)
Monday – Poplar Job Centre
Tuesday – Mowlem Children’s Centre
Wednesday – Financial Health Centre (Massingham Street E1)
Friday – Meath Gardens Children’s Centre
Helal Uddin (Resident Support Outreach Officer)
Tuesday – Hoxton Job Centre
Thursday– Whitechapel Idea Store
Friday – Poplar Food Bank
Refer by email [email protected]
Please click here to refer a Tower Hamlets resident to the Resident Support Outreach Team
Citizens Advice Universal Credit Support Service
Tower Hamlets, Newham, Hackney residents. Claimants/ clients can be referred through the Helpline 0800 144 8 444 or directed to local Job centres for support .
PLEASE NOTE – The below information is subject to change during the pilot phase.
| Days | Job Centre | Start Time | End Time | Borough |
| Mondays | Hoxton JCP | 9.30am | 5.00pm | Hackney/ Tower Hamlets |
| Canning Town JCP | 9.30am | 5.00pm | Newham | |
| Stratford JCP | 9.30am | 5.00pm | Newham | |
| Tuesdays | Hackney JCP | 9.30am | 5.00pm | Hackney |
| Poplar JCP | 9.30am | 5.00pm | Tower Hamlets | |
| Wednesdays | Hoxton JCP | 9.30am | 5.00pm | Hackney/ Tower Hamlets |
| Hackney JCP | 9.30am | 5.00pm | Hackney | |
| Canning Town JCP | 9.30am | 5.00pm | Newham | |
| Thursdays | Hoxton JCP | 9.30am | 5.00pm | Hackney/ Tower Hamlets |
| Hackney Office | 9.30am | 5.00pm | Hackney | |
| Poplar JCP | 9.30am | 5.00pm | Tower Hamlets | |
| Stratford JCP | 9.30am | 5.00pm | Newham | |
| Canning Town JCP | 9.30am | 5.00pm | Newham | |
| Fridays | Hackney JCP | 9.30am | 5.00pm | Hackney |
| Poplar JCP | 9.30am | 5.00pm | Tower Hamlets | |
| Stratford JCP | 9.30am | 5.00pm | Newham |
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