Thank you to all those who attended our free webinars on ‘Hidden Carers, Hidden Benefits: Supporting Older People to Access Benefits'.
We’re delighted to say that our next free webinar will take place very soon. This session will focus on 'Universal Credit When Things Go Wrong: Sanctions, Deductions and Hardship Payments'.
📅Date: Thursday, 16th July 2026
🕐Time: 2:00 PM – 3:00 PM
🎯Title:Universal Credit When Things Go Wrong: Sanctions, Deductions and Hardship Payments
Learning Objective:
- Common reasons Universal Credit claims can go wrong - Understanding Universal Credit sanctions and how they work (including rates) - What to do if someone has been sanctioned - Managing affordability and identifying financial hardship - Hardship payments: who can get them and how they work - Practical case studies and examples of common Universal Credit sanction issues
** Especially, join our Q&A session with our expert.
PIP Update: Rising Caseloads, Appeals and Tribunal Decisions
Statistics published by the DWP in June confirmed that there are now 4 million people claiming Personal Independence Payment in England and Wales (as of April 2026), representing a 2% increase on the previous quarter. Those statistics also confirmed that nearly half (45%) of PIP appeals have resulted in a ‘lapsed’ decision after the DWP changed the decision in claimant’s favour. This means a person has lodged an appeal but the DWP have revised the decision before the tribunal has taken place. Finally, just 28% of mandatory reconsideration requests resulted in a change of award.
Separately, a claimant has successfully had their initial refusal of a PIP award sent back to a First-Tier Tribunal for re-hearing after appealing to the Upper Tribunal. The claimant was refused PIP on the basis that he was able to provide support to his disabled wife as well as operate an automatic vehicle, which the First-Tier Tribunal found incompatible with his ‘claimed disablement’ (though he made clear that his disablement was primarily physical, where the care he provided was more of an emotional nature). Whilst we might say it’s a positive that these decisions can be challenged or changed, the time taken can be a real struggle for the vulnerable people caught up in that system.
For those wanting to find out more on how to successfully challenge a benefit decision, we offer a full-day CPD-accredited course on Challenging Welfare Benefit Decisions where we discuss in detail how we can support claimants to effectively challenge those decisions, PIP or otherwise.
Moving to Universal Credit: A Smooth Transition for Some, Challenges for Others
Qualitative research by the DWP has found that claimants moving from legacy benefits to Universal Credit reported that people found the process smoother than expected but that those with complex needs found the move significantly more challenging particularly in relation the change to monthly payments or having the housing element paid to them (where previously legacy benefits could be paid fortnightly and Housing Benefit in particular paid directly to a landlord.
Society Matters offers a full day CPD-accredit course on Advanced Universal Credit where we discuss in detail how we can provide effective support to people with complex needs claiming UC to enable them to manage their claim effectively.
PIP Decision-Making Set for Change
The DWP have confirmed that they have begun rolling out a pilot on the ‘transformed’ PIP decision making in which healthcare assessors pass on only factual information before case managers make a decision on the points awarded/award length. Providing an update to the House of Commons, DWP Minister Sir Stephen Timms said the change ‘aims to reset and re-balance the decision-making process to free up assessment provider capacity and improve decision quality.'
Universal Credit Sanctions: Do They Help People Into Work – or Push Them Further Into Hardship?
Society Matters Trainer Gareth Newman explores the real-world ramifications of what happens when a sanction is placed on a Universal Credit claimant and whether it serves to encourage people into work or punishes them.
Podcast – This is the North Episode 50: The Stories that Keep Us Smoking
In this episode, Alison sits down with Ailsa Rutter OBE, director of Fresh and Balance, the organisations that have led the North East's work on tobacco and alcohol for two decades. It is a conversation about a problem many people assume was dealt with years ago, and about how much of the harm that remains lives not in the tobacco itself, but in the stories built around it.
Her argument is precise and uncomfortable. Two in three long-term smokers are killed by what they smoke, and no consumer product has ever been invented that is guaranteed to be so lethal.
And yet the North East has cut smoking by 62% in two decades, from the worst rate in England to very nearly the best. From the first of January next year, nobody born after the first of January 2009 will ever legally be sold tobacco, the first policy of its kind anywhere in the world.
