Forecasting impact of UC roll-out in local area

I’m trying to find some statistics that I can use to try and forecast the impact of UC once it rolls out in my local area (Bridgend County Borough), up until now the impact has been minimal but obviously this is the calm before the storm! We know that it will have a big impact on our clients and in turn, our workload (Citizens Advice) but we need to emphasise this to all our local funders.  Can anyone point me in the right direction please?

Many thanks

Paula

There’s some quantitative stuff in this report from ARCH/NFA - mostly about rent arrears but they also look at some other impacts (on page 7.)

http://arch-housing.org.uk/media/96253/nfa__arch_universal_credit_-_a_progress_update__welfare_reform_survey_findings_-_as_at_sept_2016__.pdf

Our Future Benefits Model (FFBM) has an enormous number of scenarios showing the effects of benefit changes over the next 5 years.  There are a good number of examples of these that can be downloaded from http://bit.ly/2mX9OM9 .  The model can use local rent levels and other housing costs as well as typical incomes and family types.

Thank you both for your input - back to the spreadsheets!

Last year we did a study where we looked at 40 tenants who had gone onto UC within a period of a few months.  We assessed that about 50 per cent required some kind of advice intervention, ranging from fairly straight forward ie - identifying that 7 waiting days incorrectly applied or completing DHP application.  Through to more complex advice such as MR to challenge refusal to backdate, or WCA casework, or complex because sustained and repeated intervention needed to get UC into pay, or because customer vulnerable.

50 per cent is really quite a large number of tenants and not sustainable to provide an in depth specialist service to all.

We are now trialling a different kind of intervention in the early stage of UC and are going to track every claim for a period of months to see what happens and what support/advice is needed, and impact on rent acct of course.