How to Apply
Advice
Universal Credit is generally paid monthly and includes both a standard allowance and extra amounts that may be awarded depending on your circumstances. For example, looking after children or caring for a disabled person.
A member of staff at your local Jobcentre will assess and fill out your application. The Universal Credit team will deduct from your payment the following benefits:
- Bereavement Allowance;
- Carer’s Allowance;
- Employment and Support Allowance;
- Incapacity Benefit;
- Industrial Injuries Disablement Benefit;
- Jobseeker’s Allowance;
- Maternity Allowance;
- Severe Disablement Allowance (SDA);
- Widowed Mother’s/Parent’s Allowance;
- Widow’s Pension; and
- Benefits from a country outside the UK.
Where to find an application
A staff member at your local Jobcentre will assess you, they will ask questions about your health, education, income or any other factors that may affect your claim. Please see here for a list of questions that will be asked as part of your assessment.
When will I first receive Universal Credit?
It usually takes around six weeks to receive your first payment, if you require financial assistance while waiting for your first payment then you can apply for an advance payment (treated as a loan which is later recovered from your normal payments).
How Lestons can help
If your application is unsuccessful then you can open a case to instruct us to contact the DWP for clarification with the aim to get you some benefit, our specialist would also, as a matter of course check to see if there are any other benefits available to you. To gain our assistance you need to open a case, this is done by simply clicking on the link at the top of the page, you will then need to deposit a sum equal to one hour’s usage, we appreciate that finding these funds may be difficult but we do try to keep our costs as low as possible. Upon receipt of these funds, you will be assigned your personal caseworker who will telephone you to discuss the matter and make suggestions on how to proceed.
Please note your caseworker can only give generic advice, their role is to prepare your details for handling by our benefits advisor and to act as your point of contact, they will also issue you with your Password and PIN, these will be needed to log onto your client dashboard. From your dashboard you will be able to manage and view every aspect of your case, upload documents, images, files etc.