News – 23 April 2021
We’re proud to have a dedicated Financial Wellbeing team to help our customers with free and confidential welfare benefits and debt advice.
This past year has been an incredibly busy one for the team, with their highest number of welfare benefits referrals (1,227) for five years.
Here’s what the team has achieved in the last 12 months:
Benefits are changing – start preparing now!
At the start of April, Benefit rates were updated.
If you claim Universal Credit (UC), you’ll continue to get an extra £20 per week which was brought in to help people out during the coronavirus pandemic. However, the government has announced that this will end on 1 October 2021. Please make sure you start preparing now for this drop in income.
The government also stopped the extra Working Tax Credits (WTC) of £20 per week at the end of March this year. Instead of this, they have said they will pay all WTC claimants an extra one-off £500 by 23 April. This does not count as income or savings for other benefits.
If you’re worrying about debts, or think you may not be getting the right benefits, please call 0300 123 5544 and ask to speak to our Financial Wellbeing team.