Trussell Trust: Government Missed Opportunity to Help People on Low Incomes.

A report written for the Trussell Trust, the charity providing many of the UK’s Food Banks, highlights the continuing problems with the roll out of Universal Credit.

The report # Five Weeks Too Long, written for the charity by Ellie Thompson, Abby Jitendra and Sami Rabindrakaman, is based on evidence provided by several organisations working with people living in poverty. These include Centrepoint, The National Housing Federation, The Salvation Army and social housing provider The Riverside Group.

Evidence cited in the report shows that in areas where Universal Credit has been in place for at least a year there is a 30% increase in Food Bank use. After eighteen months the usage rises by 40% and after two years by 48%.

Although attempts have been made by the government to find solutions to the problems that have beset its flagship welfare reform policy. The five-week wait for new claimants before they receive their first payment continues to cause problems.

The availability of government loans to cover the shortfall in payments when moving onto Universal Credit, the report says, has only helped to push people into debt.

In a press statement Trussell Trust chief executive Emma Revie said, ‘Universal Credit should be there to anchor any of us against the tides of poverty, but the five-week wait fatally undermines this principle, pushing people into debt, homelessness and poverty’.

Hugh Owen, Director of Strategy and Public Affairs for the Riverside Group said the evidence given in the report shows rent arrears amongst their tenants had risen for Universal Credit claimants since 2015.

He said that along with the Trussell Trust they were calling on the government to ‘end the five-week wait because increasing numbers of out tenants are experiencing poverty whilst waiting for their first payment’.

Emma Revie said the government had ‘lost the opportunity to help people on low incomes in the recent spending review’, she called on prime minister Boris Johnson to ‘end this wait and help prevent more of us from being swept away by poverty’.


The report also draws attention to the impact the five-week wait for payment has on the physical and mental health of claimants.

Emma Revie concluded by saying that in a society ‘that believes in justice and compassion’, the five-week ‘just isn’t right’.

Adding that ‘it is something that can be fixed, Universal Credit was designed to have a wait, five weeks is too long, and we must change the design’.