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.
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: