Universal Credit

Universal Credit

Universal Credit (UC) will be made available at 150 additional job centres over the next two months, with all job centres due to be covered by next year.The payment replaces six different benefits, including housing benefit, JSA and tax credits, and is currently available in nearly 100 job centres.

At the moment UC is not very 'universal' and there is a long way to go before the system can cope with families and more complex social groupings.  Treasury officials admitted late last year they had still not signed off on the business case for the flagship welfare programme. The scheme will not be signed off by the Treasury with a final decision potentially not coming until 2016,