People on the lowest incomes – both in and out of work – have endured a decade of austerity; with freezes and cuts to social security benefits and in-work support; hollowing out support, undermining resilience and ability to cope with adversity.
Advice NI, Rural Support and The Ulster Farmers’ Union have expressed their collective concern over the impact on many of the 134,000 self-employed people in Northern Ireland who currently rely on tax credits and who will be impacted by ‘Move to UC’.
People on the lowest incomes – both in and out of work – have endured a decade of austerity; with freezes and cuts to social security benefits and in-work support; hollowing out support, undermining resilience and ability to cope with adversity.
Advice NI calls for restoration of NI Executive to provide desperately needed local support as poorest households brace themselves for a winter of crisis and deprivation.
Advice NI has produced the first in a series of Briefing Papers on ‘Move to UC’ which is the UK government’s plan to move ‘legacy’ social security benefit claimants onto Universal Credit by December 2024
Advice NI, Northern Ireland’s leading advice charity, highlighted at the launch of their annual report that they dealt with 86,000 enquiries from the public on the Covid-19 Community Helpline from the beginning of the pandemic.
Leading advice charity; Advice NI Head of Policy, Kevin Higgins and Professor Eileen Evason CBE is urgently calling on the NI Executive to extend Welfare Mitigations to alleviate further hardship in NI.
Employees who are paid early at Christmas may be affected by a flaw in the Universal Credit (UC) system whereby claimants may be treated as receiving two monthly wages in one assessment period, resulting in a dramatically reduced or even nil Universal Credit award.
More than 150,000 food boxes have been delivered to those most in need since the Department for Communities launched its COVID-19 Food Parcel Service in April.
