Universal Credit: Disqualification

(asked on 8th January 2019) - View Source

Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what the number of hardship payment awards to sanctioned claimants of universal credit was in each conditionality category for (a) live and (b) full service claimants in each month since August 2015.


Answered by
Alok Sharma Portrait
Alok Sharma
COP26 President (Cabinet Office)
This question was answered on 20th March 2019

The information requested by each conditionality group is not readily available for Universal Credit Full and Live Service claimants and to provide it would incur disproportionate cost.

Sanctions are only used in a small percentage of cases, and that is when people fail to meet their agreed commitments without good reason. When considering whether a sanction is appropriate, a Decision Maker will take all the claimant’s individual circumstances, including any health conditions or disabilities and any evidence of good reason, into account before deciding whether a sanction is warranted.

However, the information that is readily available is displayed in the table below. This shows the number of Universal Credit Full Service sanction decisions which were followed by a Recoverable Hardship Payment during 2017 and 2018.

Sanction decision month

Number of UC Full Service sanction decisions which were followed by a Recoverable Hardship Payment1

Number of people on Universal Credit2

Jan-17

100

437,751

Feb-17

0

458,742

Mar-17

0

481,592

Apr-17

100

504,748

May-17

400

513,481

Jun-17

300

527,535

Jul-17

300

551,088

Aug-17

400

574,802

Sep-17

300

601,921

Oct-17

400

623,565

Nov-17

300

650,145

Dec-17

200

692,039

Jan-18

600

717,523

Feb-18

500

762,909

Mar-18

500

801,401

Apr-18

700

856,280

May-18

400

902,317

Jun-18

1100

961,643

Jul-18

2200

1,019,181

Aug-18

2400

1,093,073

Notes:

  1. The information provided in the provided table is based on preliminary analysis of internal management information and may be subject to future revision. Figures have been rounded to the nearest 100. Subsequently, figures in the table that are 0 are less than 50.
  2. The number of people on Universal Credit is published on Stat-Xplore. (stat-xplore.dwp.gov.uk)

Reticulating Splines