White Paper on Universal Credit

Written evidence submitted by Blaby District Council

1 I write to advise that whilst in principle I support the Universal Credit I object to it being delivered centrally by the DWP for the following reasons:-

o The Coalition Government advocate for local delivery and Local Authorities are best placed to deliver this service to local people.  

o The proposal is that in the main the DWP would provide the universal credit with Local Authorities picking up discretionary elements such as community care grants and crisis loans.  Local Authorities are equipped to deal with HB and Council Tax benefit claimants and understand their local communities and therefore should pick up the whole remit. 

o There is a serious miscalculation of the number of people who will not (for whatever reason) be able to operate the online service which will then fall to the Local Authority to resolve, therefore, they may as well do it all.

o Service users will be confused as to who to go to, and will inevitably try to access the service via their Local Authority

o Centralising benefit payments could lead to the same issues that service users had with Child Tax Credit, where wrong payments/no payments/over payments were made and the reputation of the service suffered as well as the service users.

o Local Authorities are person centred and offer access to services via as many avenues as possible making it easier for the service user, this is in contrast to many service users experience currently of DWP.

December 2010