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Social landlords’ ‘hands tied’ over Universal Credit, says report
Social landlords are “working with their hands tied” when trying to help tenants on Universal Credit as rent arrears continue to rise, the Northern Housing Consortium (NHC) has warned.
In a new report, the membership body said 69% of housing providers in the North of England reported receiving inconsistent information about Universal Credit from the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP).
Two-thirds said rent arrears are increasing, with 73% of these blaming the welfare reform programme.
Only 14% of the social landlords surveyed said Universal Credit has met its core objective of making work pay.
The NHC, which represents councils, ALMOs and housing associations in the North of England, said social landlords are being “proactive” in making changes to prevent residents facing problems with Universal Credit, but more mechanisms are needed to allow them to help.
It stressed that without fixes to “ongoing IT and communication issues, late payments and a lack of support for claimants will only see the most vulnerable less likely to engage with the system and thus arrears and the threat of eviction increase”.
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The body repeated calls to pause the roll-out of Universal Credit “to give DWP the opportunity to iron out the persisting flaws required to make the system workable for all concerned”.
Barry Turnbull, business intelligence officer at the NHC, said: “The system should be more effective in the way it works with social landlords by being more flexible and there should be mechanisms in place to make it easier for third parties such as landlords to support claimants – the landlord portal could be pivotal in achieving this.”
The new report revisits the NHC’s previous survey of members about the impact of Universal Credit, published in December 2017.
The DWP has been approached for comment.
