Universal Credit- CMS

Universal Credit (UC) is a single income related payment for people who are out of work or on a low income. The amount paid depends on the circumstances of the claimant and other members of their household. It will replace the following benefits and tax credits:  Job Seeker’s Allowance (Income Based)  Employment Support Allowance (Income Related)  Income Support  Child Tax Credits  Working Tax Credits  Housing Benefit. Child Maintenance Group (CMG) has an interface with Customer Information System (CIS) which notifies CMG when a paying parent is in receipt of Universal Credit. When CMS is updated to reflect that a paying parent is in receipt of UC, an interface with Real Time Earnings (RTE) will be automatically triggered to establish whether they are in receipt of UC with or without earnings from employment or self employment. If the paying parent is receiving UC with no earnings, they will be considered as being in receipt of benefit and will be assessed accordingly. The deduction from benefit request form is completed and sent automatically from the calculation SR to Universal Credit. If a paying parent is receiving UC and they have earnings, they will be treated as a non benefit client and will be assessed on their income. This may be HMRC income or current income if tolerance is breached. When a client starts or stops earning, CMG will not be automatically notified. Instead, clients are required to notify CMG when this happens to allow a Change of Circumstances (CofC) to be completed manually. Universal Credit will inform CMG via an automated email when deductions are accepted, ended, modified, and when a deduction cannot be taken. This will generate as an Email - Inbound activity. UC will also inform CMG when a claim closes. When there are two paying parents in the same household and they are in receipt of UC, the deduction needs to be split between the cases when it is received by CMG. This is because UC is a singular payment to a household, not a person. When performing the change, the other paying parent needs to be linked to the SR for the system to identify this split. See Paying Parents With Separate Cases In The Same Household within Procedural Exceptions for more information.