Universal Credit is 'completely unworkable, badly designed and already out of date', says jobcentre employee

The IT behind the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) flagship welfare programme is “completely unworkable, badly designed, and already out of date”, according to a jobcentre employee, who was speaking to Channel 4′s Dispatches.


The Universal Credit project, which aims to merge six benefits into a single monthly payment, has been troubled since its inception, with constant delays and MPs insisting that it will write off at least £140m. 

According to the Guardian, the whistleblower claimed that the IT works for single claimants that are straightforward cases, but that more complex claims have to be completed manually.

The employee isn’t the first insider to reveal problems with the project, asComputing came into contact with a consultant who had seen first-hand the destructive nature of the Department for Work and Pensions’ IT strategy. He had claimed that the DWP’s IT strategy is hampered by employees worrying about whether the tabloid press will approve of their actions, and also suggested that the DWP has several other projects that are doomed to fail on the horizon.“That’s slow and easy to get wrong,” he said.

Dispatches also uncovered a memo from a jobcentre manager asking her staff for solutions to tackle an increasing workload brought about by the new system.

The internal email, seen by the Guardian, suggested that one of the 60 centres where the scheme has been rolled out is accumulating a claims backlog that would require centre staff to work three times more than their limit to clear.

However, a DWP spokesperson insisted that “there is absolutely no evidence that cases cannot be dealt with”.

She added: “Universal Credit’s IT system is robust and effective and we have trained 26,300 work coaches who are successfully providing new support to claimants to help them better prepare for work”. Only last week, work and pensions secretary Iain Duncan Smith suggested that there would be no final date for delivery of the programme.

“Arbitrary dates and deadlines are the enemy of secure delivery,” he said.

This may signal further delays to the programme, which was meant to have launched in October 2013.

In September, Labour MP Chris Bryant, shadow minister for welfare reform, had suggested that the programme is “the Secretary of State’s pet project” which is “being kept on a life-support system”.

Duncan Smith claimed that the government scheme would generate £7bn in economic benefits annually. He said this is largely due to up to a further 300,000 households being able to find work once the programme is implemented.

According to the latest statistics available from DWP, only 14,170 people were receiving Universal Credit in September. The government hopes that this will hit 100,000 in May 2015 and 500,000 in May 2016.

Source: computing.co.uk