Five-week universal credit wait for claimants is a baffling own goal – here's the proof

With an autumn budget on the horizon, now is the time for a clear-eyed assessment of what works in welfare policy and what doesn’t. The government has made welcome, pragmatic reforms to universal credit, from reducing debt deductions, to promises on the standard rate. These moves demonstrate an understanding that financial stability is key to helping people thrive.

Which is why the persistence of the five-week wait for a first payment is so baffling. It is a structural flaw that actively creates the very problems – debt, instability and dependency – that good policy aims to solve.

As one of Christians Against Poverty‘s (CAP) clients who applied for universal credit explains, the impacts of the wait for support can leave people desperate and having to turn to charities for support.

Read more:

• Homeless people risk losing benefits if they don’t move to universal credit, DWP warns
• ‘Getting benefits eased pressure on my family’: £9.6bn of universal credit went unclaimed in the last 12 months
• DWP penalises universal credit claimant despite getting new job: ‘Congratulations – you’re sanctioned’

“The first time I ever signed up on universal credit… when my partner and I split up, I had my first experience of a food bank, because they don’t give you nothing for about eight weeks. I was quite surprised, because when you go to a food bank, you don’t expect to see nurses, people who work. It was quite an eye opener. I was standing with nurses, and I thought, ‘How bad is it that we can feed ourselves in work?’ I didn’t even think I could get the food bank because I worked.”

For any new claimant, universal credit’s ‘payment in arrears’ model enforces a minimum 35-day period without support. The only official solution is an ‘advance’ – a loan which must be repaid, cutting a claimant’s already tight future income. In effect, the state is acting as a creditor to people at their most vulnerable moment. This isn’t just a compassionate failing; it’s a policy own-goal.

The data shows why. At CAP, we see the consequences daily with 58% of our clients on universal credit and with overall average debts of almost £16,000. Our latest polling data also reinforces that this is an urgent reality. Almost a quarter (23%) of the UK adult population, 12.5 million people, reduced the amount they heated their homes in the past year due to financial challenges, and more than seven million skipped a meal to save money on food (13%). Forcing them to wait five weeks for support doesn’t build resilience; it shatters it.

The impacts of this policy can be debilitating. People are forced into unmanageable positions. They face the personal impacts of having to go without essentials, shouldering the weight of stress, and becoming trapped in spiralling problem debt. It pushes people towards high-cost credit, rent arrears, and reliance on food banks, creating significant downstream costs for local authorities, housing associations and the NHS.

Every pound spent on debt advice, temporary accommodation and mental health support linked to this initial hardship is a pound that could have been saved with a more effective policy design. The five-week wait is an inefficient and expensive way to administer a benefit intended to prevent poverty.

As another of the people CAP has supported through free FCA-authorised debt advice says in their own words:

“All our bills were overdue because we had to wait so long to actually be able to claim universal credit, and by that point we’d borrowed money… so that we could do food shopping and things, just to buy the basics. It was so quick, how all of a sudden you’re just holding on by your fingernails, six weeks later there’s no way of catching back up, you can’t catch back up then.”

As we prepare for conference season, the focus should be on practical solutions that deliver value and genuine support. New universal credit claimants face a five-week wait for their first payment. During this time, essential costs continue, forcing many to take an advance payment. This is a loan, not a grant, which is repaid through deductions from future benefits.

Although the deduction rate was recently lowered, it still reduces an income that is already too low to cover essentials, pushing people into debt from the very start of their claim. Removing the five-week wait would stop forcing people into debt, reduce long-term costs to the state, and ensure the government’s positive welfare reforms are built on a solid foundation. It is a straightforward policy fix that would deliver immediate, tangible results.

Juliette Flach is the policy and public affairs manager at Christians Against Poverty.

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