Welfare Reform

The Universal Credit (Managed Migration and Miscellaneous Amendments) Regulations (Northern Ireland) 2019 were laid before Parliament on 23 July 2019. These regulations set out how the Department for Communities will move existing benefit claimants to Universal Credit under the managed migration process, scheduled to start sometime in 2020.

A research initiative from the University of Ulster and the University of York plans to explore claimant perspectives on the experience of receiving Universal Credit as well as developing recommendations for the future evolution of Universal Credit in Northern Ireland. The project also hopes to generate lessons about the specific and distinctive operation of Universal Credit in Northern Ireland that can be shared with policymakers in the rest of the UK.

Mitigation payments have really helped the people of Northern Ireland to deal with the financial stresses created by welfare reforms like the bedroom tax. These mitigations are shortly due to end, something that will cause pain and hardship for many. However, mitigation payments can and have been lost. Victoria, one of our advisers recently assisted a client facing eviction due to the loss of his mitigation payment.