Lone parents entering JSA
Regarding the item about lone parents switching from IS to JSA:
The problem is that IS is paid a week in advance and a week in arrears. JSA is paid two weeks in arrears. So a lone parent who gets their IS on Nov 17th is getting money for 10-17th and 17th to 24th. If they then switch to JSA, their next payment wont be until Dec 8th, to cover 24th-30th Nov and 1st-8th December. So they wont have had any payment for 3 weeks (17th Nov to Dec 7th) and on Nov 17th only got enough money to last two weeks. Hence, they need a loan to cover that 3rd week (and they cant repay it all on Dec 8th because the two weeks money they get on that date will be just enough for the two weeks to come, even though its to cover the two weeks that have gone). In the long run, no-one loses out as the 'lost' week is made up when the lone parent stops claiming. But the switch causes a short-term cash-flow problem.
The problem will be repeated in April 2009 when all remaining Income Support claimants (carers, lone parents with younger children, people who are unfit for work but on IS not ESA) are moved to "payment fortnightly in arrears" . The numbers are much larger than the lone parents who lose out in November, which is almost being used by the DWP as a trial run. Its called the Periodicity project by the way.
Thanks for the information. I suspected the problem was cashflow rather than total benefit received, although obviously that’s still a major issue (and often one of the things that trips up people moving into employment).
I was probably unclear in the newsletter. My question was more what happened to lone parents whose children reached the maximum age previously? Presumably the issue was already there, and the reason it’s being picked up on now is because the numbers are so much greater owing to the mass transfer of claimants.
You are right that its a long-standing issue but it normally only affects a few hundred people a month at most, as the oldest child reaches 16.