OXFORD MP Anneliese Dodds has written to the Government over concerns people receiving Universal Credit might be left up to £200 short because of regulations.

Ms Dodds has called on work and pensions secretary Amber Rudd to make clear how many people receiving Universal Credit might be affected by an unusual quirk and how much it would cost to mitigate the impacts.

Meanwhile, the city council said it had noticed EU citizens have been incorrectly turned down for UC and that other council tenants have been pushed into arrears as a result of the new system.

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In 2019/20 the financial year will have 53 weeks – but the Government is currently only planning to pay for 52 weeks. Ms Dodds fears that would leave tenants short by a ‘significant amount’.

In a letter to Ms Rudd, Ms Dodds writes: “This will leave these claimants shorts of a week’s rent. This is an issue of fairness.

“This will affect the poorest and most vulnerable tenants, who very often have these types of tenancies and through no fault of their own will be left without a week’s rent. A week’s rent could range from £65 to over £200 per week for an affordable rent on a four-bedroom family home. This is a significant amount of money to tenants.”

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Ms Dodds has now asked Ms Rudd to tell her whether the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has calculated how much it would cost to change the regulations and pay a week’s extra rent for people on weekly tenancies.

Last November, fellow Oxford MP Layla Moran called on the DWP to make the same changes – but was told the Government had no plans to fix it.

She was told by Government minister Justin Tomlinson: “A key principle of Universal Credit is that it simplifies the benefit system for working age claimants and re-assessing housing costs to reflect the number of rent payments in any particular year would be complicated and lead to confusion. As such, the department has no plans to amend these regulations.”

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A city council spokesman said: "The extensive planning we did ahead of UC rollout in October 2017 has helped to mitigate some of the impacts reported elsewhere.

"The main issues we are seeing at the moment are rent arrears for council tenants and EU citizens being wrongly turned down for UC – for the second of these, we are looking at how we can support the advice sector to deal with this issue."

The council set aside £50,000 for customers over worries UC could hit residents hard. But as of Wednesday, it had paid just £580 of that in 14 different awards.

When it was introduced by former work and pensions secretary Iain Duncan Smith in 2010, UC was heralded as the most radical reform to welfare since the 1940s.

But last June the National Audit Office said the introduction in some areas across the country had not provided value for money and caused hardship for some recipients.

It combines housing benefit, child tax credit, income support, working tax credit, income-based Jobseeker's Allowance and income-related employment and support allowance into one payment. But it has been beset with problems over recent years.

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