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Your monthly Universal Credit payment may decrease soon if you are self-employed. This is a result of the reintroduction of the minimum income floor and the gainful self-employment tests.
Universal Credit staff can start to apply the "minimum income floor" to any person it believes to be in gainful self-employment from August 2021.
This change could cause a big reduction in income for certain people. You should speak to your work coach urgently if
Universal Credit may refuse a claim for help to pay a person’s housing costs if
they think that a tenancy is not a genuine commercial relationship between a landlord and a tenant or
they believe the tenancy was created to take advantage of the benefit system.
It’s important to get advice quickly if this happens to you or to your clients. Submitting a well-argued mandatory reconsideration request can help to prevent homelessness.
The Cliff Edge Coalition is once again urgently calling for legislation to be passed to extend the welfare reform mitigations package. Without new legislation, mitigations will end in March 2021.The Coalition is further calling for this legislation to close loopholes in the existing arrangements which have left thousands unprotected from the benefit cap and bedroom tax.
New legislation has been enacted to resolve the irrationality identified by the Court of Appeal in Secretary of State for Work And Pensions v Johnson & Ors [2020] EWCA Civ 778. The plaintiffs in this case were penalised because they received two payments of wages in one Universal Credit (UC) assessment period.
The Cliff Edge Coalition welcomed the Minister for Communities commitment earlier this month to introduce new legislation to provide for an extension of the welfare mitigation payments. The Coalition also welcomed the Minister’s recognition that new regulations should include additional mitigations for families affected by the benefit cap and two child rule.
BBC News NI reported last week on system failures within Universal Credit that have left some local tenants in rent arrears. We’d encourage anyone who has fallen behind on their housing payments to get advice urgently, regardless of the reasons for missed payments.