Charities and housing associations have warned that plans to move to an online-only system for claiming benefits do not include enought support for people who have no access to computers and do not know how to use the internet.
Once the government's flagship welfare
reform Universal Credit is introduced later this year, the system will
be wholly internet-based and claimants will only be able to make
face-to-face applications in exceptional circumstances.
The
radical changes to the benefit system are being introduced at a time
when funding cuts have reduced the number of charitable advice centres
that help claimants apply for benefits. Delegates at a debate on
Universal Credit and IT readiness warned that insufficient thought has
been given to how to support claimants from among the eight million UK
citizens who are not online.
Full Article on Guardian Society
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