You will be contacted for an interview
Within a few days of submitting your application, the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) will contact you to arrange the interview to complete the application. This could be by phone call, text, email or letter - you'll have chosen how to be contacted on your online claim form.
Payment will take around 6 weeks
You can ask for an advance payment of Universal Credit to help you get by while you're waiting for your first payment. If you don’t get an advance payment you won’t get any money until at least 5 or 6 weeks after you apply for Universal Credit.
Advance payments
You should ask for an advance payment at your interview if you don’t think you’ll have enough money to live on between when you apply and when you’ll get your first payment.
The advance payment is a loan - you’ll have to pay it back, but you won’t need to pay any interest. The repayments will be automatically deducted from your Universal Credit payments until the advance is fully paid back. This will take several months, and you’ll get less money until then.