Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what the average time has been for first payments to be made to new claimants of universal credit from their application date in (a) Newcastle upon Tyne, (b) the North East and (c) England since the introduction of that payment.

There is no data broken down by area or region. However, the latest published data on gov.uk, shows that, nationally, 81% of new Universal Credit households received their first payment in full and on time. Across the whole of Universal Credit 92% of all households received full payment on time.

The data can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/universal-credit-payment-timeliness-january-to-june-2017