The government has done it’s level best to equate “Benefit Scroungers” with “Pensioners” when it comes to increasing such things in line with full inflation of late.
On closer examination - the old “In-work benefit” system - seems to be passing away before our very eyes, as per OP’s original question.
Now I’d say is the very worst time to go seeking any payments of UC.
I was on UC for a long year while starting with me being stood down without furlough more than two years ago.
It is hard to get onto it to start with, but to stay on it - you need to do the following:
(1) Have kids living with you. If you don’t - it will be an impossible set of conditions to keep it going over time.
You and your wife’s earnings - must not exceed around £1800 per month back when Furlough started, but that amount has now DROPPED to around the £1000 per mark.
Why so?
The Taper.
Each pound you earn - reduces the amount you actually get by 55p/£
This means if you earn say, £1000 and you qualified for an award of say, £545.50 per month when you originally qualified…
You end up losing it ALL, because the final payment is calcuated as (Award-Tapered off Earnings).
£1000 of earnings turned out for myself to be where it was all gone, meaning we only got (in this household) a 3 figure amount for the period when my earnings PLUS my now retired from retail management Wife - were below £1800 back then, but must now be below £1000 to continue to qualify.
FFS on agency since the “driver shortage uplift” - you can earn that kind of money in a week these days, so it was an impossibly low bar to keep under, and it got duly dropped. No holidays, given up drinking, and turning lights off - has kept this household on the straight and narrow whilst all around me - the roads continue to be full of traffic, despite a time having now come when surely EVERYONE among us - should be considering tightening their belts■■?
When you have received a UC award payment of £0 for six months in a row - your UC claim is automatically closed down.
Again, I’ll state £1000 of earnings per month - is an impossibly low bar to keep under to keep it going, in my experience from 2020-21 tax year in particular. I also earned around £16500 in that year, which just disqualified us from having our council tax paid, free prescriptions, and other free and subsidised stuff one is supposed to qualify for whilst on UC.
We never got the “Cost of Living” payment neither.
We didn’t claim “housing benefits” in the first place, with me choosing to take a part time job during the lockdown, to pay (what was then) a low mortgage payment myself.
The “bar” for getting the “Cost of living payment” was that you had to receive, in effect a UC payment EVERY month, rather than just those months I earned less than £1000 in my experience. I slipped the net, and didn’t qualify, much to my annoyance, as was the case with not qualifying for Furlough when the Government website announced that those working full time for at least 12 months continuous “would qualify”. I suspect that such unpaid-out furlough money, got sent abroad, or at least ended up only in the hands of those lucky few who did get the furlough, but that’s two years in the past now, and I’ve dealt with it by working the longer shifts necessary to get myself back on track, without wasting all my earnings on “overheads” such as communting “any five from seven” at the drop of a hat as to “last minute notice” start times, prefering instead to work fixed shifts of longer length.
My only worry now is that my health might one day no longer permit me to work a full timer’s set of hours over 3-4 shifts instead of the dreaded 5-6-5-6 pattern, which in my view - is a “younger main’s quest” these days…
It would seem to be unwise then - to rely on UC to keep your head above water, as it simply no longer “catches you if you fall” once you get back to work……
It is better for those who don’t ever intend working - but I would argue that the “in-work benefits culture” - is now truly OVER, not much of which has been said on the mainstream news.
This will affect EEs quite badly, and other workers that get a low basic wage for working a lot of hours outside of the transport industry.