More than half a million struggling Brits were denied a £326 summer cost-of-living payment to help with rocketing bills. Boris Johnson offered the fund - the first half of a total £650 - to more than 8 million people on benefits in July to show them “we are on their side”.
But ministers now admit 551,000 Universal Credit claimants missed out because they earned too much from work, according to The Mirror. Labour believe some of them had two paydays fall in the same 30-day qualifying period because their wages come every four weeks.
This “staggering” technicality meant their income was temporarily too high to get a cost-of-living payment - even though usually it is much lower. A further 6,600 Universal Credit claimants were refused the £326 payment because they got a benefit sanction - a catch first revealed by the Mirror in August.
