Lois N on 17 February 2021
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Q. Are you currently receiving Universal Credit or Working Tax Credit?
Yes, I am receiving UC or WTC
Q. What difference to your life has the extra £20 per week made, and what difference would it make if it was taken away?
for me, the 20 pounds uplift per week has made a difference to my shopping, to what products I can purchase, that's a big deal. Also to mitigating the increased cost of electricity, of the heating, all of those kind of things are really relevant as well. But one of the other things that's actually been quite a lifeline for us has been that the local council, as part of the covid relief budget, reduced our council tax. That's going to go up at the same time that the Universal Credit uplift goes down and we have to start paying back our advances. For me, those things are going to come crashing together and they're going to render it impossible for me to continue to have any quality of diet for myself and my son. And the stress that's associated with trying to budget on a significantly decreased budget when shop prices, when product prices are going up, etcetera, is a constant worry. And things that other people might not consider a luxury like good coffee, you know when you're stuck in the house all the time and there's you're not doing anything else, you're looking after your child, good coffee can be the thing that saves you morning and gets you back to something that otherwise is quite difficult. So one of the things that I would really like to see some guarantee that we're going to get the uplift whether it's for a short time or for a longer time, but at least some kind of guarantee that there will be something there because otherwise we will fall in between the gaps and that's deeply unfair on top of everything else that people have suffered at this time.
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