For those with little or no savings to fall back on it would have provided them with the funds to bridge the 5weeks to the first UC payment. That's all. Those with £6k savings would not have that same issue to deal with.
Don't come in here being all reasonable, the forum is having an SILH pile on with the added fun of digging his son out.
Just on this tangent
He had his guaranteed employed work and self-employed he had solid bookings supporting touring bands and acts from March to July - with much of the rest of the year pencilled-in. He would have easily had sufficient to pay his tax bill for 2019-2020 - which will not be much in any case. He'd paid his tax bill for 2018-2019.
Indeed they can but its one of the huge flaws in the system. They get granted the funds early and usually can have up to the maximum amount of their claim., however it screws them over if they do it, because its not an advance of UC funds, its classified as a budgeting loan so when they start getting their actual UC payments 5 weeks later a proportionate amount is deducted from it to repay the loan, which often leaves many people short and struggling until the next payment so another loan is needed and more gets deducted again next time. Its an absolute vicious circle for anyone that takes the option to do that and will often end up owing a debt more back to government in loans than they can afford to pay back.
I don't quite understand the full ramifications of your post, but agree with its gist. While I'm inclined to believe it's actually better than what it replaced, I believe there's a certain amount of 'tweaking' that would make it 'fairer'. I know a couple of, quite frugal, UC claimants who have ended up having to borrow money to pay their 'leccy because of 'deductions' they neither understood nor (obviously) had 'budgeted' for!
Basically you don't get an advance you get a loan which is paid back out of your monthly UC Benefit, but its quite a chunk they take so leaves people short and end up borrowing more to replace what they lost and means losing more next time. Its a vicious cycle of creating government owed debt but using your benefits asnthe collateral to borrow against. A very odd way of doing it.
It is paid back over a period of time but that period is from every subsequent benefit payment you get and its quite a chunk for example when I unfortunately had to claim due to redundancy I was entitled to the princely sum of £345 a month, but if i wanted a budgeting loan of the same amount to cover me for 5 weeks whilst waiting for UC it was worked out I would have had to sacrifice £65 a month out of that £345 until paid off, leaving me with £280 per month which would have had to cover all my outgoings, food etc. Fortunately I didn't take the option or make it as far as the 1st payment as I got back into work. But sacrificing £65 a month into the ether is a lot when you have nothing coming in and is how it ends up with people requiring mkresnd more budgeting loans until their benefit is pretty much 50% of their entitlement and food banks get utilised just to survive.
You are not telling me anything I didn't already know!
I don't really buy that line with people though, system is flawed and the loan side is one of those flaws, but the biggest flaw with it is the people who believe its always the fault of the system. Nobody is forced into a budgeting loan and plenty believe they should get more and forget the fact it is only a safety net its not a replacement of income to be relied on and live comfortably off.
That would be fine if the 'victims' were in a position to take alternative action. Unfortunately, for precisely the reason they are on UC, they are not! And if they can't find some sort of benefactor, albeit/even a temporary one, they are truly in deep doodoo!
In that case then they're destined to always suffer at hands of the system. Hopefully they get an upturn in their futures at some point as I feel for any genuine cases such as those in this case where there isn't an alternative to seek better income
I agree - and I repeat - the only issue was one brought about by the sudden lockdown and the fact that income due for work done before registering does not get treated the same as savings. The government waived many things and helped out many in many ways. Maybe it could have helped those due payment for work done before lockdown who found themselves having to register for UC before that payment was received.
Rude! And out of order, imo.
