at the time when support is most needed." Gillian Guy of Citizens Advice said, "Deductions from universal credit can make it harder for people to get by. People receiving universal credit are unlikely to have much slack in their budgets, so even small amounts can put a huge strain on their finances. Building on last year's improvements to universal credit, the government now needs to ensure deductions are made at a manageable rate and take a person's ability to cover their expenses into account." Charlotte Hughes who advises benefit recipients, said deductions were impossible to predict and often done with no warning. "The first time somebody knows that money's been taken out of their account is when they go to the bank. It's just a minefield. Living with that stress that you don't know what money you're going to get from week to week, from month to month, that makes you ill – and that's before you can't eat, and before you can't look after your kids properly. It's rampant." Pilots The scheme was originally planned to begin in April 2013, in four local authorities – Tameside (containing Ashton-under-Lyne), Oldham, Wigan and Warrington, with payments being handled by the DWP Bolton Benefit Centre – but was later reduced to a single area (Ashton) with the others due to join in July. In Wales, it is known the UC pilot covered new claimants in Brecon in early 2013. The pilot would initially cover only about 300 claims per month for the simplest cases of single people with no dependent children, and was to extend nationally for new claimants with the same circumstances by October, with a gradual transition to be complete by 2017. (One tester of the new system in April noted that the online forms took around 45 minutes to complete, and there was no save function.) In March 2013 it was reported that final Universal Credit calculations would be made manually on spreadsheets during the pilot, with the IT system being limited to booking appointments and storing personal details. It was separately reported that no claimants turned up in person at the town hall on the first day of the scheme. The Financial Times reported that the October national roll-out of Universal Credit would now begin in a single Jobcentre (or possibly a "cluster" of them) in each region and that in December 2012 Hilary Reynolds, who had recently