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UC draft regs published
Lots of substantial differences here, including:
Simplification of earnings disregards, 1.5 times housing costs has gone. now there will be two rates for those with housing costs and those without.
100% of pension contributions disregarded.
No SMI if there are any earnings at all
Etc.
Battered as we all are, I don’t know if I can even contemplate this, Here’s a bit from the decision making and appeals explanation about who gets treated as vulnerable for the purposes of direct payments, weekly payments etc.
. “It is likely that applications will be screened so that only those claimants who have reasonable grounds for exceptional payment arrangements reach a human decision maker. To ensure exceptional payments are targeted towards those claimants who would benefit most from such an approach we are considering using a criteria-based screening process” (page 13 of the DWP explanation)
And have you tried running the supersession regulations round the situation of a homeless person with chaotic behaviour who changes their accommodation every couple of days?
The draft regulations rent and other payments in the social sector say that service charges are only eligible if in one of three categories:
a) Services necessary to maintain the fabric of the accommodation
b) cleaning of communal areas (not defined as far as I can tell)
c) some cleaning of exterior windows.
In this context, how do you think services like furniture, white goods, curtains and carpets might be treated?
A couple more things on services. Am I right that there is no provision for services in private rented housing? This may be significant in central London where charges in some board and lodging and hostels are well below the LHA, so the services would need to be added to the core rent.
And what happens to board and lodging in general and meals deductions in particular?
On a different theme - non dependant deductions - it states no non-dependant in case where for a single person para 2 applies or for a couple EACH member para 2 applies.
So this would imply that both members of a couple need to meet the conditions for there to be no deduction whereas at the momnet it is either member of a couple.
Also low rate care has been removed and they have to be on middle or high.
The simplified earnings disregard seems to produce a lot of strange results. It seems a lot of people will be better off not being found to be liable to make rent payments (and therefore get the bigger disregard). Will people be appealing against decisions that their liability was not contrived? “Oh yes the whole thing was just a wheeze we dreamed up one night in the pub..”
The mortgage support also produces a pile of work disincentives. Give someone £86 pounds of SMI on a £100,000 mortgage, find them an hours work a day paying £10 an hour. Their earnings disregard may increase, as they lose all their SMI, but the amount of SMI lost is considerably more than the total earnings.
Yet ministers are still saying that work will always pay.