A plea to look at the effects of a year of Universal Credit in Weymouth and Portland has been rejected.

Borough councillors heard that by the time the report was completed the authority would only have a few weeks before being disbanded.

Cllr Lucy Hamilton asked the council’s scrutiny and performance committee to set up an inquiry into the local effects of the controversial benefits changes.

She said the roll-out had caused consequences, not only for those on the new benefit – but also for council staff and the way the authority operated. She said it could lead to additional costs, possibly as much as £240,000, by the end of the financial year.

Councillors were told that above set limits there was no financial help available from the Government and the borough had already exceeded those limits.

Cllr Hamilton said that in December the benefit would have been in place for a year in the borough and there might be lessons which could be learned: “It’s timely to look at the particular circumstances of Weymouth and Portland because it differs from elsewhere in the county.”

She said that many local councillors had received calls for help from people suffering hardship because of the way the new credit was being administered and that certain groups, including the self-employed, were amongst those who had been put into financial difficulties because of the changes.

Cllr Tony Ferrari agreed that a report into the effects locally would be useful: “But what can we do? We could spend tons of time for a report which will only last six weeks,” he said, referring to the time before the council is disbanded in April 2019. He suggested the study might be better to be commissioned by the shadow Dorset Council which will have to decide in April how it wants to administer the benefit.

Committee chairman Andy Blackwood shared the view: “We are caught between a rock and a hard place. I have no doubt that the roll out of Universal Credit has caused significant difficulties for a number of people, but by the time we get the report back it will be too late to do anything about it.”