THE city council has urged reform of Universal Credit after it said it is being bombarded with junk messages which cost £35,000 a year to shift.

It was already weeks behind dealing with admin work for people’s benefits at the start of 2018, but said the Government’s system has significantly increased its workload.

So far this year the council has received more than 3,600 notices from the Department for Work and Pensions notifying changes to people’s benefits – more than three times the number it had been sent this time last year.

The council conceded some of the details are necessary because they inform staff that claimants are entitled to housing benefit, council tax reduction or discretionary housing payments, which it deals with.

But many others, a council report notes, are ‘unnecessary or even blank’.

In one instance, the council has received 13 different notifications for one person’s account since December. The council did not explain why this might be.

The report states: “Whilst the correspondence does not directly affect the council’s benefit subsidy, the processing of such information is a significant drain on the council’s limited resources, diverting [staff] from dealing with council benefit claims and inevitably leading to admin delay.”

“The Government does not seem to recognise the impact of these unintended consequences on the authority and representations are being made via the leader of the council and the local MP.”

The council said it has cut a backlog of late processing of claims has improved over recent weeks – from a 12-week delay in January to seven weeks currently.

It has already agreed to plough in an extra £100,000 over the next financial year to pay for more staff in its benefits service to reduce the hold-ups.

In January, Oxford East MP Anneliese Dodds asked a parliamentary question to find the average number of notices sent to councils as some claimants are moved onto Universal Credit.

The then housing minister Alok Sharma said notices were sent to council at ‘nil cost’.

The council has warned that if the trend over Universal Credit continues, it expects it will need to employ an extra 12 officers by 2020 simply to delete the unnecessary messages.

Council leader Susan Brown said: “Unfortunately, this frequently includes notification of Universal Credit awards that are blank or duplicates, that should have gone to other local authorities, or that have no direct impact because we are not paying any benefit to the claimant ourselves.”

Universal Credit was designed to make it easier for people receiving benefits to claim them.

New claimants receiving child tax credit, housing benefit, income support and job seekers’ allowance have been paid in one go since October.

A Department for Work and Pensions spokesman said: “Universal Credit is helping people improve their lives.

"We are working closely with local authorities as we roll it out and have provided Oxford City Council with funding to help with the introduction of Universal Credit in their area.”