Missing a jobcentre appointment on Universal Credit

Attending appointments is a work-related requirement in your claimant commitment, so missing one is a failure DWP has to decide about. It is not an automatic loss of money. A decision maker looks at whether you had a good reason for not attending, and only reduces your payment if they decide you did not. You then get a journal message or a letter telling you what you failed to do, how much your payment is reduced by, how long the reduction may last, and what you need to do to end it. Two sanctions never run at the same time, though one can start as another finishes. Until that decision is made, nothing changes: your award is paid as normal while the question is open.

There is no fixed list, which is the point: a decision maker weighs what happened against your actual circumstances. DWP's own examples are a hospital appointment falling at the same time, being unexpectedly ill and unable to do the activity, and a domestic emergency that stopped you getting to an interview. Caring responsibilities, a condition flaring up and a genuine transport failure sit in the same territory. Forgetting does not: DWP's published example of a claimant who simply forgot a training course is an example of no good reason. If your commitment no longer matches your life, that is worth fixing separately, because the commitment is meant to be built around your circumstances and can be reviewed whenever they change.

Contact DWP straight away, the same day if you can, through the journal in your online account or the contact details your work coach gave you. Write plainly: the date and time of the appointment, what happened, and why it stopped you attending. Add anything that backs it up, such as a hospital letter or a message confirming a shift change. Ask for a new appointment in the same entry. Journal entries are timestamped and stay on the record, which is exactly why the same explanation given by phone three weeks later is worth less. If you are asked for more information, answer that in the journal too, so everything the decision maker needs is in one place and dated.

Two levels apply to a missed appointment. If attending appointments to discuss work is your only requirement, a lowest level sanction applies, and it runs from the date of the appointment until the day before you contact DWP to arrange a new one, which you must then attend. Everyone else gets a low level sanction, which runs from the date of the failure until the day before you do the activity, plus a fixed number of extra days: usually 7 if you have not been sanctioned in the past 365 days, rising to 14 and then 28 if it happens again. In both cases part of the clock is in your hands, because the open-ended stretch ends when you get back in touch.

A sanction reduces the standard allowance only, by the full daily rate for each day it runs, or by 40 per cent of that rate if you are 16 or 17 or your only requirement is attending appointments. So a single person aged 25 or over has £424.90 a month exposed and nothing else: the housing element, child element, childcare costs and health element are all paid as normal. If a sanction means you cannot afford food, heating, hygiene items or housing costs Universal Credit does not cover, ask for a recoverable hardship payment through your journal, your work coach or the helpline. Two groups cannot get one: you have to be 18 or over, and the sanction has to be at the full daily rate rather than the 40 per cent rate, so being 16 or 17, or having appointments as your only requirement, rules it out. It is repaid out of later payments, so those are lower for a while. If you think the decision is wrong, ask for a mandatory reconsideration within a month.