Page 63 - Reforming Benefits Decision-Making

2.80 This can cause significant variation in UC awards and may mean that
claimants fail to qualify for UC at all in the month they receive multiple
payments. In Johnson, a case relating to the circumstances set out in a) above,
the Court of Appeal held that the Secretary of State’s failure to resolve the
issue was irrational. During the case, the Secretary of State emphasised that
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the UC awards made each month are not calculated manually but are
automated. She argued that amending the assessment periods would require a
complete rebuild to the UC computer system resulting in substantial delays to
the roll-out and costs to the taxpayer. However, Rose LJ (as she then was)
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did not accept this, stating that:

Devising a computer programme capable of recognising and responding to
the huge number of factors covering every aspect of a claimant’s family
and financial circumstances….must be an exercise of mind-boggling
complexity….I cannot accept that the programme cannot be modified to
ensure that the computer can recognise that the end date of a particular
claimant’s assessment period coincides with their salary pay date so that if
the latter date falls on a non-banking day the receipt of two roughly equal
payments is likely to be the result of a salary payment being made a day
early and the second payment should be moved into the next assessment
170
period.
She also noted that the UC system had already been refined numerous times
and these had been accommodated “without fatally upsetting the computer.”
She pointed out that the roll out of universal credit involves the
implementation of a managed migration pilot. It is the nature of a pilot
scheme that it is intended to throw up problems so that they can be sorted out
before the new scheme is implemented across the whole of the country and

168 SSWP v Johnson [2020] EWCA Civ 7781.
169 Ibid, para 81.
170 Ibid, para 82.

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