Sources and evidence
The Companion is built to help you make sense of your own circumstances and prepare clearer Universal Credit journal messages. Where relevant evidence is available, it can use reviewed public guidance to inform its response.
It is independent of DWP and GOV.UK. It does not replace official guidance, access your Universal Credit account or send journal messages for you.
How evidence is used
The Companion considers what you tell it and, where relevant, the Claim Context you have chosen to save. It can organise events, distinguish confirmed details from unanswered questions and help you decide what needs explaining.
The authority-retrieval system is designed to select relevant passages from stored public material when enabled. It considers source review status and whether evidence is appropriate to the issue.
Some Universal Credit rules depend on when something happened, where a claimant lives and other facts. A passage being relevant does not automatically mean it applies to your situation.
The Companion can suggest questions and prepare wording, but you review it and copy it yourself if you choose. It cannot decide whether DWP will accept your explanation.
Our knowledge system
UCJC has a structured authority corpus containing source records, versions, individual guidance passages and relationships between passages. Its retrieval system is designed to distinguish usable evidence from material that is unresolved, conflicting or unsuitable for the claimant's circumstances.
We are developing coverage across 47 Universal Credit subject domains in controlled stages. This describes our coverage programme, not a claim that all 47 domains are finished or live. Coverage is not exhaustive, and individual responses may have insufficient evidence.
Sources are reviewed and added through a controlled process, but UCJC does not search GOV.UK live for every reply. Public guidance and legislation can change. A review date is not necessarily the date a rule came into force. For an important decision or deadline, check the current official source.
Official references
These links are examples of primary official references relevant to Universal Credit issues. They are not a complete inventory of UCJC's evidence corpus or a list of sources used in a particular response.
Your online account, journal and claim responsibilities.
Read Manage your Universal Credit claim on GOV.UK →Your agreed work-related responsibilities.
Read Your claimant commitment on GOV.UK →Official guidance about sanctions and related processes.
Read Universal Credit sanctions on GOV.UK →Official guidance about deductions.
Read Money taken off your Universal Credit payment on GOV.UK →Limits and independence
AI can misunderstand facts or make mistakes. UCJC does not provide legal advice, determine entitlement, guarantee a sanction will be avoided or promise that DWP will accept an explanation. Your saved circumstances are not official evidence, and the Companion never posts to your UC journal.
Read suggestions carefully, correct anything inaccurate and seek independent welfare-rights advice where appropriate.