Benefit claimants in the North East are almost a third more likely to be sanctioned than someone in other parts of the country, a new report suggests.
The report by the IPPR think tank - which comes just a week after Chancellor Jeremy Hunt revealed sanctions reforms aimed at getting people on Universal Credit benefits into work - suggests there is a “postcode lottery” shaping the likelihood of someone having their benefit payments stopped or cut in different parts of the country.
In what the report described as a “concerning trend”, IPPR said the rate of Universal Credit (UC) claimants being sanctioned has risen rapidly since the start of the pandemic, with more than one in 12 (7.9%) claimants subject to sanctions, according to the latest data. It said this means more than 100,000 people on UC have had their benefit payments stopped or reduced because they have been deemed not to have met the conditions imposed by Job Centre Plus.
