15,000+ Colchester families face losing Universal Credit 'uplift'
Around 4,000 of those include children and there are calls for the £20-a-week rise to be kept when the Budget is revealed later
Over 15,000 households in Colchester could lose out if the uplift in Universal Credit is dropped.
4-thousand of those include children and there are calls for the £20-a-week rise to be kept when the Budget is revealed later.
Organisations including Citizens Advice are calling for the extension to last for at least a year.
The weekly top-up is set to end after March 31.
Jane Morris is from Citizen's Advice:
"We are expecting an awful lot of people at the end will be trying to pick up their lives and trying to find jobs.
"That is going to be difficult.
"They are probably going to find themselves in a lot of debt and I don't think they'll be able to cope for many months, probably until the end of the year, maybe even longer."
Department for Work and Pensions figures show more than a third of claims lodged since Universal Credit began have been made during the coronavirus pandemic.
Jane added:
"£20 would actually give you two days' worth of food for a family and also run your electricity.
"So it's a substantial amount of money, it's over £1,000 a year and without it they would be seriously worse off."
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