Thursday 20-06-2019 - 10:09

Are you a student with children and/or are you disabled and in receipt of a disability benefit such as PIP or DLA who is entitled to benefits during term time? If so we would encourage you to contact the Student Union Advice Centre prior to the end of term on the 21/06/2019 for advice on your benefit entitlement over the summer vacation period.

As you may be aware the DWP have been slowly introducing a new benefit called Universal Credit which is replacing a number of income related ‘legacy benefits’ such as Income Support (IS) Employment & Support Allowance (ESA), Job Seekers Allowance (JSA), Child & Working Tax Credits and Housing Benefits.

This means that where as in previous years students with children or disabilities have been able to claim benefits such as IS, ESA & JSA over the summer vacation period this will no longer be possible and instead students who meet these criteria will have to claim Universal Credit instead. Non-income related benefits and Child Benefit are not affected by this change. 

Once somebody claims Universal Credit their entitlement to ‘legacy benefits’ ends this means any current awards of these benefits such as Child Tax Credit and Housing Benefit will end and it will not be possible to return to these benefits in the future. Instead, these payments will form part of a monthly Universal Credit payment. 

The issue with this is that from our experience in the Advice Centre students are often ‘worse off’ during term time by switching to Universal Credit than remaining on ‘legacy benefits’ due to how Student Finance income is treated when assessing entitlement. This can be as much as £1000+ over the course of the year.

However by choosing to remain on legacy benefits, although you may be better off over the course of year, you will likely be worse off over the summer period as you will not be able to claim any benefits (other than Universal Credit) to help with your living costs. Therefore, you may need to weigh up whether you can make do with less money of this period in order to be better off over the course of the year. 

We would therefore encourage any students who are entitled to claim benefits during term time to contact the Advice Centre for further advice on this matter so that you can make an informed decision on what to do regarding your benefits this summer and discuss if any other forms of financial support are available.

We would also encourage anybody who wishes to know more about whether they could be entitled to benefits or anybody who is experiencing any financial difficulty to contact us for advice. 

Check the Advice Centre page for our contact details and opening times.

Please note that it is the government’s intention to eventually switch everybody on legacy benefits to Universal Credit at some point in the future. Current timeframes indicate that for most postcodes this is unlikely to be in the next year unless there is a change in your circumstance but this is subject to change. An adviser will be able to discuss this further with you.