Universal Credit and 4 weekly pay

fedupandhurt

I was hopeing someone on here can give me some general advice about UC and 4 weekly pay.


Iget paid the last friday of every month what date would be the best to start a UC claim?.


I read somewhere that if you make a claim on a bad date things can get messy is this true? any advice?

huckster

You want to avoid an assessment end date towards the end of the month. This is because you may end up with 2 months wages being counted in during one monthly assessment period. For example, if you were paid early one month because of bank holidays/weekends causing earlier payment of wages.

If you start your claim in the middle of the month, the assessment end date being in the middle of the month, would avoid this.

calcotti

If you are on a four weekly cycle it is inevitable that you will have one month of the year in which you have two payments within your monthly UC assessment period.

The impact of different payment cycles on UC is explained here https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/universal-credit-different-earning-patterns-and-your-payments/universal-credit-different-earning-patterns-and-your-payments-payment-cycles

If you have a nil entitlement to UC in the month you get two wage payments you have to then make a rapid reclaim through your journal in order to keep you claim live (absurd, but that's what it says).

However I'm not sure from your post that you are paid every 4 weeks because you also say that you are paid on the last Friday of the month so would have thought that generally you are paid every 4 weeks but with a 5 week pay gap at some points in the year.

Huckster's suggestion of starting UC in the first half of the month is sensible (provided that doesn't mean you're missing out too much by delating the start of your claim).

fedupandhurt

Yes Thats right calcotti i recive my pay in the bank on the last friday of every month so sometimes when there is 5 weeks in the month i have to wait an extra week to get paid.


So would makeing a claim mid month say the 12th avoid any problems?

JCS1

Getting paid on the last Friday of the month is monthly pay, not 4 weekly - there will be only 12 payments in a year, not 13.

calcotti

fedupandhurt wrote: »

So would makeing a claim mid month say the 12th avoid any problems?

I would have thought any date between the 1st and about the 20th of the month would be fairly safe. If the last day of the month is a Thursday and you are paid the previous Friday that would be the 22nd even if the month was February. If you want an extra margin then going slightly earlier in the month is sound.

That happens if the last Friday is a bank holiday (say Good Friday or Christmas Day) do you then get paid on the Thursday?