Payroll insight
Extract from DWP guidance If you’re paid weekly – If you’re paid weekly by your employer, you will get either four or five payments of earnings within an UC assessment period. Depending on the amount you get paid this may affect your UC. When you have five weekly earnings payments within an assessment period, your income may be too high to qualify for UC in that month. If this happens you will be notified that your income is too high and you will no longer get UC. You can re-apply the following month as you should only get four wage payments in your assessment period then. You will need to be prepared for a month when you get five wage payments in one assessment period and budget for a potential change in your monthly UC cycle, the above provisions have little overall effect, other than occasionally changing which assessment period has an extra payment date taken into account. But
for those people paid monthly, on the last banking or working day, the provisions can have extremely serious results. Note that according to the CIPP’s research (CIPP
Payslip Statistics Comparison 2008–2016) the last working day of the month continues to be the most popular pay day for monthly payrolls at 38.6%.
payments. If you’re paid every two weeks – If you’re paid every two weeks by your employer, at certain points throughout the year you will get three payments of earnings within an UC assessment period. If you’re paid every four weeks – If you’re paid every four weeks by your employer, you will get one payment of earnings for each UC assessment period for most of the year. You will usually get two payments of earnings within a UC assessment period once a year. Depending on the amount you get paid this may affect your UC. When you have five weekly earnings payments [or three fortnightly, or two four- weekly] within an assessment period, your income may be too high to qualify for UC in that month. If this happens you will be
notified that your income is too high and you will no longer get UC. You can re-apply the following month as you should only get four [or two fortnightly, or one four-weekly] wage payments in your assessment period then. So, not only may a claimant find him/ herself without any benefit in that month, they have to reapply for UC in the following month. As long as they haven’t left it more than six months before re-claiming, they won’t have to go through the full UC claim process again. How likely is it that a claimant’s UC will stop in one of these months, rather than just being reduced? It depends upon their earnings and the amount of UC they receive, but the answer is ‘quite likely’, and more so if they are paid two- or four-weekly.
Table A: Pattern of paydays
UC period
Pay days
From
To
Weekly
Fortnightly
Four- weekly
Monthly
02/11/2018 02/12/2018 02/01/2019 02/02/2019 02/03/2019 02/04/2019 02/05/2019 02/06/2019 02/07/2019 02/08/2019 02/09/2019 02/10/2019 02/11/2019 02/12/2019 02/01/2020 02/02/2020 02/03/2020 02/04/2020 02/05/2020 02/06/2020 02/07/2020 02/08/2020
01/12/2018 01/01/2019 01/02/2019 01/03/2019 01/04/2019 01/05/2019 01/06/2019 01/07/2019 01/08/2019 01/09/2019 01/10/2019 01/11/2019 01/12/2019 01/01/2020 01/02/2020 01/03/2020 01/04/2020 01/05/2020 01/06/2020 01/07/2020 01/08/2020 01/09/2020
5 4 5 4 4 4 5 4 4 5 4 5 4 4 5 4 4 5 4 4 5 4
2 2 3 2 2 2 2 2 2 3 2 2 2 2 3 2 2 2 2 2 3 2
1 1 2 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 2 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
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| Professional in Payroll, Pensions and Reward |
Issue 46 | December 2018 / January 2019
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