Jonathan Boyd on making sure free, confidential and impartial advice is accessible to everyone

The dramatic passage of the UK Government’s Welfare Bill recently put the spotlight on the challenging future of social security payments.

But it’s important to remember that many people are already struggling to access the support they’re entitled to, even before those changes come into effect.   

For the past few years Universal Credit (UC) has slowly been replacing many other types of benefit – this being the result of the last round of welfare reforms. UC was supposed to make claiming easier, but in fact it has proved complicated for many people – proving again how changes to the system should always be implemented with care (UK Government please note).  

The Citizens Advice network has a dedicated Help to Claim service which has already assisted tens of thousands of clients with free independent and confidential advice as they switch to UC. I want to raise awareness of this here as we’re seeing a lot of people at the moment who are struggling with the process. 

This is because the UK Government is currently issuing over 80,000 migration notices per month across the UK to people who need to change their old-style benefit to UC. This can cause a lot of fear and anxiety as clients may be already struggling to make ends meet and any change to their income can have a hugely negative impact.  

Shockingly, recent figures show that one in every five households who receive a letter about making the switch to UC do not do this, resulting in a significant loss of income as their old benefits were terminated. There could be several reasons for this happening, for example not acting on the migration notice instructions or not understanding the gravity of the notice. 

Another reason could be that the recipient of the notice simply could not understand English as their first language. Helpfully, in this situation the Help to Claim service has a solution: our Language Line service, which gives access to an interpreter in any language to communicate our advice.  

I wrote here a few months ago about how Help to Claim also offers a free service for people with hearing loss. We are all about making sure our free, confidential and impartial advice is accessible to everyone.  

So if you, or someone you know needs help after they have received their 'managed migration' notice, do not become or let someone be one of the 22% to do nothing and have the old benefit terminated without moving to UC, resulting in lost income. Contact us. It’s what we’re here for. 

You can get in touch with Help to Claim on 0800 0232581 or  https://www.cas.org.uk/helptoclaim. Our British Sign Language (BSL) service is at: https://www.cas.org.uk/british-sign-language-service-universal-credit. And of course general advice and support can also be accessed by visiting any one of the 59 local CABs across Scotland. 

The constant changes to welfare provision are alarming and difficult for too many people. The Citizens Advice network will always have the backs of those people. But we will also continue to press governments to get the system right in the first place so that social security provides what it says on the tin.   

Jonathan Boyd is a project engagement officer at Citizens Advice Scotland.

This column was first published in the Herald.