As is frequently reported, the government’s welfare reform bill and the introduction of universal credit to replace the current hotch-potch of separate benefit payments is not only an enormous change to the benefits system but also a hideously-complicated IT project, arguably the most ambitious of the past few decades, dwarfing past failed IT projects such as identity cards and NHS patients’ records.
While the aims of welfare reform and universal credit are laudable – to encourage work rather than state dependency – it will cause many housing providers unfathomable financial problems as some of their tenants, unused to either budgeting on a monthly rather than weekly basis or setting aside money for rent, will find it hard to avoid getting behind with their rent.
Interestingly, the leader article in this week’s The Spectator (15 September 2012) was the first newspaper to report that the Cabinet Secretary, Sir Jeremy Heywood, was ‘sceptical’ about the universal credit project, with the leader article adding that this was the Whitehall equivalent of a go-slow order for civil servants.
However, aside from the politics around the final structure of universal credit, as our article on the subject makes clear (page 16), the highest priorities for all housing providers must be to make it as easy as possible for tenants to pay their rent at the same time as having rigorous and well-tested processes to cope with the inevitable increase in arrears.
