STARING down at her job offer from the Department for Work and Pensions, single mum Freya Macfarlane felt nothing but despair.
Unemployed Freya was desperate to work, but realised she’d have to turn down the role of benefits adviser – because the Department’s own Universal Credit rules mean she has to foot an £800 childcare bill upfront.
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With the school summer holidays arriving before her start date at the end of July, she simply can’t afford to fork out on childcare for her two sons, Jago 10 and Oscar, 8.
“I have so many skills available to the workplace and to people and yet it seems it’s impossible to work around my children,” says Freya, who lives in Bexhill.
“And I feel like I’m being penalised for that, I feel like I’m being penalised for being a single mum.”
Under Universal Credit, while parents are able to claim back up to 85 per cent of childcare costs, this is usually only available in arrears – meaning they need to fork out the money upfront and then claim it back.
“How can you get out? It’s a trap, it’s an absolute trap,” says Freya, 35.
This is the first case of the DWP’s Universal Credit policy failing its own workers that we’ve come across.
She’s been out of work since being taken ill with anxiety and depression in 2015, when she had to give up her job as a healthcare assistant in the NHS.
Desperate to get back to work since she’s recovered from her mental health difficulties, she applied for three jobs before successfully landing the DWP role.
During this time during she was forced onto Universal Credit and into poverty after being kept waiting five weeks for her first full payment.
Freya is sharing her story as part of The Sun’s Make Universal Credit Work Campaign. We’ve been calling on the government to contribute to childcare costs upfront, reduce the five-week wait for first payment to a fortnight and reduce the taper rate – which reduces benefit entitlement as wages rise – from 63p to 50p of every £1 earned.
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Hastings – a town blighted by Universal Credit
Freya lives just outside DWP boss Amber Rudd’s constituency of Hastings, where around 7,000 people are on Universal Credit.
So six months on from launching our campaign, we travelled to the East Sussex town, to see what toll the benefit reforms are taking on the rest of Rudd’s constituents.
We found that single parents have been particularly hard hit in the seaside town, which has some of the lowest-paid workers in the country.
SUN SAYS: It’s time for action Amber
People like Freya and Rebecca deserve so much better – as do the hundreds of thousands of working families across the UK who are struggling because of Universal Credit.
It is high time Amber Rudd takes urgent action to end the suffering caused by Universal Credit.
She’s been the MP for Hastings and Rye since 2010, served as Home Secretary from July 2016 to April 2018 and became Secretary of State for Work and pensions last November.
Universal Credit is failing hard-working families and it’s taking place under her watch over her constituency, her department – and her country.
Freya is far from alone in feeling penalised as a single parent by Universal Credit. Single mum, Rebecca, 31, from Rye, says she has to budget down to her last 10p just to get by.
Her 15-month-old daughter Freya’s toys and clothes are all second hand and she is still wearing maternity clothes more than a year after the birth of her baby.
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While Rebecca has a job as a guest services assistant at a hotel, her £400-a-month salary isn’t enough to make ends meet. She used to work full time but couldn’t afford to keep paying hefty childcare bills upfront, so has been forced change jobs to reduce her hours and now only only works 12 hours a week.
She would love to increase her hours but, like Freya, simply can’t afford to pay the childcare bills.
YOUR EXPERIENCE OF LIFE ON UNIVERSAL CREDIT
Since launching the campaign six months ago, we’ve been sharing your stories to highlight the suffering caused by Universal Credit.
Through the campaign we’ve told you about:
“I don’t think I have an item of clothing that doesn’t have a hole or a stain on it, which is awful to say, but it’s because I always make sure my daughter’s got what she needs.”
“I just feel like I shouldn’t be having to live my life like that.”
Universal Credit covers her £536.90 rent and she tops up the rest with her wages and child maintenance payments. But following a split from her partner last summer she’s been forced to rely on her parents to help too.
“I rely a lot on my mum and dad. If they’ve cooked a meal or something and if they’ve got a portion left over, they’ll save it for me,” she says.
“That’s the only way I’ve managed to survive.”
Are you on Universal Credit? Tell us your story. Email: universalcredit@thesun.co.uk and join our Universal Credit Facebook group.
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“I like working so I wanted to go back,” she says. “But because of the way the childcare worked, I just couldn’t do it.”
“Every avenue I go down to try to improve my situation, you just hit brick wall after brick wall.”
She is frustrated at a system she says “doesn’t work.”
‘Amber Rudd has the opportunity to fix this’
“It doesn’t do what it’s supposed to do. It doesn’t help people back into work, it actually prevents people in my situation being able to work.”
Like so many women, Rebecca is trapped in a cycle of poverty under universal credit. She’s even gone hungry to make sure she can feed her child.
To make ends meets, Rebecca visits friends or family or walks to free events nearby as petrol or parking costs “means then that I’m £3 worse off for food”.
Rebecca wants her MP, Amber Rudd, to do something – after all, she’s been the MP for Hastings and Rye since 2010, served as Home Secretary from July 2016 to April 2018 and became Secretary of State for Work and pensions last November. She “has the opportunity to be the one to fix it,” she says. “To simply keep ignoring the problem is negligence.”
It appears that not only is Rudd, the Minister responsible for Universal Credit, letting down workers at her own department like Freya, she’s also letting down her own constituents – and working families across the country.
With two million Brits already on Universal Credit, it has been reported that many claimants are struggling to put food on the table. This is being felt keenly in Hastings and Rye, where
food bank use has shot up 113 per cent since the benefit was introduced in December 2016 and the local Hastings Food Bank now hands out well over a tonne of food a week – just two miles away from Rudd’s constituency office.
What to do if you have problems claiming Universal Credit
IF you’re experiencing trouble applying for your Universal Credit, or the payments just don’t cover costs, here are your options:
Apply for an advance – Claimants are able to get some cash within five days rather than waiting weeks for their first payment. But it’s a loan which means the repayments will be automatically deducted from your future Universal Credit pay out.
Alternative Payment Arrangements– If you’re falling behind on rent, you or your landlord may be able to apply for an APA which will get your payment sent directly to your landlord. You might also be able to change your payments to get them more frequently, or you can split the payments if you’re part of a couple.
Budgeting Advance – You may be able to get help from the government to help with emergency household costs of up to £348 if you’re single, £464 if you’re part of a couple or £812 if you have children. These are only in cases like your cooker breaking down or for help getting a job. You’ll have to repay the advance through your regular Universal Credit payments. You’ll still have to repay the loan, even if you stop claiming for Universal Credit.
Cut your Council Tax – You might be able to get a discount on your Council Tax or be entitled to Discretionary Housing Payments if your payments aren’t enough to cover your rent.
Foodbanks – If you’re really hard up and struggling to buy food and toiletries, you can find your local foodbank who will provide you with help for free. You can find your nearest one on the Trussell Trust website.
In February, Rudd admitted UC payment delays were linked to rocketing food bank use. But last week she backtracked, telling MPs “there are many reasons why someone might use a food bank.”
While that may be true for some, for Freya it was the five-week wait for her first UC payment which led her to the food bank – and into a spiral of debt she can’t escape.
At the beginning of June, while she was waiting for her first UC payment, she was forced to take out payday loans of £260 after car repairs left her with only £3.95 for the rest of the month.
“There was no other option available to me. Which, again is going to cause me even more stress and put me into more debt because the interest rates on those things are crazy. But that’s what I’m going to have to do because I don’t want my children going: what are we eating tonight?”
She gets £1,208 per month from Universal Credit and “they take about £139 a month in repayments for the advance and an overpayment from tax credits.”
She also repays nearly £50 towards council tax arrears and £65 to top up her rent. Heating her home on a pre-payment electricity meter during the winter costs “close to £240 a month just on that to keep us warm.”
‘No way to live’
“You feel like you’re robbing Peter to pay Paul and constantly chasing your tail, and that’s no way of living,” she says.
Her situation caused her to seek help from a charity for anxiety and depression.
Hastings Food Bank says they’ve seen a “significant rise” in people coming to them and a big increase in people suffering with their mental health like Freya.
And they’re not all out of work – there are people taking days off work to come and pick up food parcels.
“We had someone who’d had to take a day’s annual leave because they couldn’t make their food last until their payday,” says Natalie Williams from the food bank.
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After The Sun intervened and raised Freya’s plight with the DWP, the government department has agreed to pay her childcare costs in advance from Universal Credit’s little-known flexible support fund. It’s a discretionary back-to-work fund UC recipients can access from the Job Centre.
SAVE THE CHILDREN ON THE FLEXIBLE SUPPORT FUND
Charlotte McDonough, UK Policy Advisor at Save the Children, says: “The Flexible Support Fund provides some useful help to parents in the first month of starting a new job, but is little more than a sticking plaster for the broader problem of upfront childcare costs.
“Once the first month of costs have been paid for, parents will still be hit with huge upfront bills in the second month of using childcare – which they are forced to pay out of their own pockets before waiting up to a month to be paid back. With childcare costs increasing year on year, that’s money that many low-income families just don’t have.
“Even after the first month, paying childcare fees upfront can be an ongoing struggle for parents – especially during the school holidays, when many working parents have to pay for extra childcare. The government urgently needs provide a real solution to this problem and provide support for childcare in advance, so that parents don’t have to shoulder the burden of sky-high bills themselves.”
“UC have said they will help to cover my childcare costs until my first wage,” Freya says.
“But they haven’t explained how I go about getting these funds ready for my start date on 30 July.”
She feels angry she wasn’t told about the fund until now.
“Apparently the Flexible Support Fund is a discretionary fund,” she says. “It’s like some sort of secret club – they could have chosen to help me, but didn’t.”
The Sun wants to Make Universal Credit Work
UNIVERSAL Credit replaces six benefits with a single monthly payment.
One million people are already receiving it and by the time the system is fully rolled out in 2023, nearly 7 million will be on it.
But there are big problems with the flagship new system – it takes 5 weeks to get the first payment and it could leave some families worse off by thousands of pounds a year.
And while working families can claim back up to 85 per cent of their childcare costs, they must find the money to pay for childcare upfront – we’ve heard of families waiting up to 6 months for the money.
Working parents across the country told us they’ve been unable to take on more hours – or have even turned down better paid jobs or more hours because of the amount they get their benefits cut.
It’s time to Make Universal Credit work. We want the Government to:
- Get paid faster: The Government must slash the time Brits wait for their first Universal Credit payments from five to two weeks, helping stop 7 million from being pushed into debt.
- Keep more of what you earn: The work allowance should be increased and the taper rate should be slashed from 63p to 50p, helping at least 4 million families.
- Don’t get punished for having a family: Parents should get the 85 per cent of the money they can claim for childcare upfront instead of being paid in arrears.
Together, these changes will help Make Universal Credit Work.
Join our Universal Credit Facebook group or email UniversalCredit@the-sun.co.uk to share your story.
A DWP spokesperson said: “Ms MacFarlane’s work coach has discussed with her how we can help with upfront costs, and with Universal Credit she can claim back up to 85 percent of ongoing childcare. We congratulate Ms MacFarlane on being offered a new job and we continue to support her.”
They encourage Rebecca “to speak to her work coach because childcare costs shouldn’t be a barrier to getting into work.
“With Universal Credit working parents can get help with up-front childcare costs through the Flexible Support Fund, and claim back 85 per cent of eligible childcare costs. This is on top of 30 hours of free childcare for 3 and 4 year olds.”
While this may be the case, it’s clear from the parents who’ve shared their stories with us over the past six months that Universal Credit simply isn’t working for working families.
Join our Facebook group for more information on how The Sun is campaigning to Make Universal Credit Work.
