Guidance

Benefit sanctions statistics: background information and methodology

Updated 14 May 2024

Sanctions Official Statistics are published in the Department for Work and Pensions’ Benefits Sanctions Statistics (BSS) as of November 2017. Previously, they were published within the Quarterly Statistical Summary (QSS). The underlying data can be accessed through Stat-Xplore.

Context of the statistics

Sanctions statistics are composed of four benefit sanctions:

• Jobseeker’s Allowance (JSA)
• Employment and Support Allowance (ESA)
• Income Support (IS)
• Universal Credit (UC)

UC sanctions methodology differs from the other sanctions methodologies, and is therefore explained in a separate document.

To claim Jobseeker’s Allowance, a claimant must be available for and actively seeking work. Taking a claimant’s personal circumstances into account the work coach will set out with the claimant what is required by them in the Claimant Commitment (Jobseeker’s Agreement). If the claimant fails to keep to this Commitment, fails to do everything they reasonably can to find and take up work, fails to attend regular meetings with their work coach, or otherwise fails to meet requirements for payment of benefit, they may be subject to:

• a sanction, where their claim is stopped for a set period, or
• a disallowance, where their benefit claim is ended

The length of the sanction depends on the level category that the reason for the sanction falls into – see Table 1, and the number of previous failures within the year, but it can be up to 156 weeks.

As part of a claim to Employment and Support Allowance, a Work Capability Assessment (WCA) is carried out. If the claimant’s capability for work is limited by their health condition or disability, and they are eligible to remain on ESA, the claimant is placed in one of two groups: The Work-Related Activity Group (WRAG) or the Support Group. Those in the Support Group do not have to attend interviews and are not subject to sanctions. Those in the WRAG group may be expected to attend regular interviews with their work coach. They may also be expected to undertake Work-Related Activity (WRA) to give them the best prospects of moving into work when they are able. Any WRA should be reasonable and appropriate for the claimant, based on their health condition or disability. A sanction can be imposed for two reasons. These are:

• failure to attend Mandatory Interview without good reason
• failure to participate in WRA without good reason

ESA claimants who receive a sanction have the personal allowance aspect of their benefit stopped until they comply with the interview requirement or Work-Related Activity. A fixed period sanction of 1, 2 or 4 weeks is then applied to their personal allowance.

To claim Income Support, you do not have to be available for employment. The majority of claimants are Lone Parents (LPs) or carers.

Income Support claimants claiming solely as a Lone Parent who have a youngest child under 1 are not required to attend Work-Focused Interviews. Once the youngest child reaches the age of 1, they are required to attend any Work-Focused Interviews (WFI), with a recommended minimum of two each year. Once their youngest child reaches the age of 4, it is recommended they attend a minimum of four WFIs each year. Also, claimants who claim IS solely as a lone parent can be required to undertake a Work-Related Activity (WRA) when the youngest child is aged 3 or 4. A sanction can be imposed on these Lone Parents for two reasons. These are:

• failure to attend or participate in a Work-Focused Interview without good reason
• failure to undertake a Work-Related Activity without good reason

Income Support claimants who are claiming IS as a Lone Parent with a youngest child aged 1-4, and who also have other grounds for claiming IS will be required to attend Work-Focused Interviews every six months. A sanction can be imposed on IS claimants in this group for:

• failure to attend or participate in a Work-Focused Interview without good reason

Income Support claimants not claiming as Lone Parents are required to attend a Work-Focused Interview when they start or make a change to their claim, and then at least once every three years. A sanction can be imposed on IS claimants not claiming as Lone Parents for only one reason:

• failure to attend a Work-Focused Interview without good reason

The sanction imposed on IS claimants is a reduction in the benefit equal to 20% of the personal allowance for a single person over the age of 25. The sanction is open-ended and remains in place until the claimant attends a WFI or WRA, or until the requirement to attend a WFI or undertake WRA is no longer appropriate.

For JSA, ESA and IS, the Decision Making Process follows the same 5 stages:

1. Referral: Work Coach in a Jobcentre, or Employment Scheme provider, identifies that the claimant has failed, in some way, to meet the requirements placed upon them. For JSA, if the doubt is over the claimant’s availability for work or whether they have undertaken sufficient job searches, their benefit is suspended. In all other cases, benefit will remain in payment until the Decision Maker makes an adverse decision. The Work Coach will gather information to support the referral from the claimant and where applicable, the reasons for their failure to enable a quality decision to be made. The case is then referred to the Decision Maker. If the referral is from an employment scheme provider, the Decision Maker will gather this information from the claimant.

2. Original Decision: If the doubt is over failure to attend for JSA, and, in light of the evidence available, the only decision which can be made is to sanction, a Decision Maker in the Jobcentre can impose a sanction, otherwise the case is sent to a Benefit Centre. For all referrals, the Decision Maker will weigh up all of the information and evidence presented to them, including the claimant’s reasons for failing to meet the requirements placed upon them. They will then decide, depending on the reason for the referral, whether the claim should be sanctioned, disallowed or allowed. If the decision is to sanction (adverse decision), the sanction / benefit reduction is imposed at this point. The claimant is notified of the outcome in writing.

3. Explanation: Upon receipt of the decision notification, the claimant can ask for the decision to be explained to them. This could be in the form of a basic explanation delivered by the Jobcentre or Contact Centre, or if more information is required, a detailed explanation is provided by the Decision Maker. A written explanation can also be provided on request. During the course of a detailed explanation, or if the claimant provides new or additional information, the Decision Maker will review the correctness of the original decision and if it can be revised, it will be. If the decision is to lift the sanction (non-adverse decision), the benefit reduction is at this point repaid in full to the claimant, less any hardship paid.

4. Mandatory Reconsideration (MR): (From October 2013) If a claimant disagrees with a decision made about their benefit, they can ask the department to look at it again. A Mandatory Reconsideration must be undertaken before the claimant can appeal, although a claimant is not required to have received an explanation before an MR takes place. There are strict time limits for asking for a Mandatory Reconsideration. The claimants must ask for a Mandatory Reconsideration within 1 month of the date on their decision letter. If the DWP changes their decision (non-adverse decision), any arrears of benefit due are paid less any hardship payments. Once the MR has been undertaken, the claimant will receive two copies of a Mandatory Reconsideration Notice (MRN). The MRN tells the claimant the outcome of the reconsideration and what to do if they wish to appeal.

5. Appeal: If the Department does not change the decision at Mandatory Reconsideration, the claimant can appeal directly to an independent tribunal.

JSA and ESA both had sanction regime changes in 2012. These changes mainly concerned fixing the length of the sanction based on the level of sanction imposed on both JSA and ESA, to align with Universal Credit, and the sanctionable amount on ESA.

When a sanction is imposed on a JSA or ESA claim, hardship payments may be available for claimants. These payments never have to be paid back (although any hardship payments made are offset against any arrears due should the sanction decision be changed) and are equivalent to 60% of the JSA (or 80% if in a vulnerable group), or 60% of the ESA (or 80% if the claimant or any of their family is seriously ill or pregnant) payments that have been sanctioned. For JSA claimants not in a vulnerable group, hardship is only available from the 15th day of the sanction. For vulnerable groups and all ESA claimants, hardship is available from the first day of the sanction (or in all cases, from the day they prove that they are in hardship, whichever is later). They are available to any claimant who can demonstrate that they would suffer financial hardship if the benefit were not paid. Details of hardship applications and awards up until June 2015 can be found here: Hardship Fund statistics. These statistics are not part of the official statistics published by the Department as they are obtained from system and clerically sourced Management Information, and are therefore not 100% reliable and may contain duplicates. However, they do give an overview of the number of hardship applications and awards for JSA and ESA claimants.

In response to feedback from the users of sanction statistics, and to improve public understanding of them, the Sanctions Statistics Publication Strategy was published by the DWP on 19 April 2016 where changes were proposed to the publication of the statistics. One of these changes was to include Income Support and Universal Credit sanctions statistics alongside JSA and ESA. This was achieved as of May 2017. A further change was that a section on JSA and ESA sanction rates was to be included as the statistics users wanted to know the proportion of claimants being sanctioned. The rate is an estimate of the proportion of claimants being sanctioned in a given month.

As of May 2016, a Monthly Rate of Claimants Sanctioned for JSA and ESA has been published. It has been calculated to give an estimate of the number of sanctions relative to the number of JSA and the number of ESA claimants.

An improvement to the methodology was introduced in August 2017 for ESA, and in November 2017 for JSA, as JSA required more development as the data is more complex. This involved measuring a sanction as the number of individuals currently experiencing a drop in payment due to a sanction on the same day of the month as the claimant count is recorded. The aim is to show a real proportion of people being sanctioned at a point in time.

This change in the methodology used to produce the rate is due to the development of ESA sanction durations for the August 2017 publication and JSA sanction durations for the November 2017 publication. The sanctions durations data aims to explain the length of time a claimant receives a drop in benefit due to a sanction. Read further information on the development of the durations data and the change in methodology for the rate.

As of November 2017, benefit destination of sanctioned claimants was published for the first time. The aim of this measure is to track where claimants go post-sanction: off benefit, remaining on the benefit they were sanctioned on or moving onto a different benefit. Read further information on the benefit destinations data

In response to frequent Freedom of Information requests about the recorded medical condition of ESA claimants referred for a sanction, a new variable has been added onto Stat-Xplore ESA sanction statistics from August 2017. This variable is Medical Condition and uses the same groupings as the ESA caseload data. These groupings are based on the International Classification of Diseases (ICD10) 21 groupings of diseases.

Due to increasing demand from users, DWP are making improvements to published geography information in their National/Official statistics releases, including data released via Stat-Xplore. The changes have been implemented in the benefit sanctions statistics publication as of February 2018, and involve:

• replacing all 2001 Census Output Area (COA) based geography information with more up to date geographies based on 2011 COAs
• replacing the historic time series geographies so that they are based on 2011 COAs
• assigning geographies using an improved methodology, which involves using more reliable data to source address information

Purpose of the statistics

The purpose of the statistics is to inform and present data on the number of decisions made to apply a sanction to those on JSA, ESA, or IS and the outcomes of the sanction process.

Within DWP

The information in the Benefit Sanctions publication, supplementary tables and underlying datasets are used to:

• evaluate, develop and support policy, strategy and operational decisions, initiatives and options and business plans
• answer Parliamentary Questions and Freedom of Information requests
• inform Departmental Responses to Commons Select Committees
• inform press office statements
• provide briefing lines including for devolved administrations

By:

• policy, strategy, operational support and associated analytical teams
• DWP Private Office and Press Office
• Parliamentary Question, Freedom of Information and Briefing teams

External Users

Outside DWP, the internet based publication mechanism means that understanding all the varied uses of the statistics and data is challenging. However we have heard from, or are aware of, a variety of users from:

• Parliament: House of Commons Library, Parliamentary Committees
• other government: Cabinet Office, HM Treasury, Scottish and Welsh Government, local authorities/groups of local authorities
• charities and not-for-profit organisations
• academics
• external commentators: leading news media and blogs
• United Kingdom Statistics Authority
• National Audit Office
• general public

Limitations of the statistics

Every quarter, when the latest figures are added to the previous sanctions figures, the previous sanctions figures are updated to take account of any changes, such as decisions being challenged or changed, that have occurred. Only the latest point of each decision in the process of sanctions, decision reviews, mandatory reviews and appeals is kept.

When collecting and presenting the statistics in this way it can cause confusion over the number of original decisions to sanction and therefore the proportion that have been changed. It also means that as some cases move on to Mandatory Reconsideration and Appeal there will always be retrospective adjustments to earlier publications.

When it came to deciding how to count decisions, there were two options. The first option was to record only the latest decision on a case, the second to record every single decision. The first option gives information about the sanctions count, whilst the second option gives information on the decision making process. It was decided that the first option, the sanctions count, was the most important information in terms of public interest and informing sanction policy, with the only drawback that we cannot know when the original decision was taken. Note that sanction decisions are often made and processed after the date that the claimant failure occurred. This means that it is possible for a sanction decision to be recorded against a month differing from the one in which the claimant originally failed to meet their conditionality requirements.

There were also limitations specific to the previous calculation of the Monthly Rate. The figures related to an estimate of JSA and ESA claimants that were sanctioned in a given month, and are therefore not suitable to be used to infer the proportion of claimants sanctioned over a longer time period as there are changes in the number of claimants each month. Also, the figures are not a true proportion of the number of people sanctioned in a month as some people might have left the benefit, or not yet started on the benefit at the time of the claimant count. This calculation has now been replaced with a Point-in-Time rate using the sanctions durations to calculate the number of claimants on the benefit at the same time of the month that the claimant count for that benefit is taken. This is an improvement on the previous rate calculation as retrospection does not have an impact on the figures, but it does also have some limitations which are discussed in a separate benefit sanctions statistics methodology document.

Users should note that the methodology for allocating a claimant to a Census Output Area (COA), for ESA and JSA, is different dependent on whether the date of decision relates to the Old or the New regime. Care should be taken when interpreting time series data that spans both the Old and New regimes and also includes residence based geography. IS and UC sanctions decisions use the same methodology as the New regime for ESA and JSA outlined below.

Old regime

Residency based geographies are derived from postcode as recorded on either the Decision Making and Appeals System (DMAS) or the Labour Market System (LMS).

This postcode relates to a claimant’s place of residence, as at July 2017, and not the Jobcentre Plus office administering the claim. This may not be place of residence at the time the decision was made.

In a very small proportion of cases, where COA cannot be assigned directly from the postcode, it is randomly assigned within the Local Authority area in which the Jobcentre Plus office administering the claim is based. There may still be a very small number of records that are still recorded as unknown because data on both the postcode and administering Jobcentre Plus office is unknown.

New regime

Residency based geographies are derived from address information as recorded on the Customer Information System (CIS). CIS is a more reliable source of addresses as it links to all of the DWP benefit systems and contains the most up to date address for each individual.

These addresses are then put through a data cleansing procedure which makes sure postcodes are formatted correctly and the address fields are populated correctly. 2011 COAs are then assigned to claimants using the ONSPD (ONS Postcode Directory), starting with a direct postcode to COA lookup and then working through a logical allocation routine. These COAs are then used to merge on higher level geographies from the National Statistics Postcode Look-Up (NSPL).

This file is then matched to the sanction decisions data, ensuring that the date of decision is between the address start and end of dates. If no known address can be matched for a period of time, a previous known address for that claimant is used, as this is more accurate than random allocation. There may still be a very small number of records that are still recorded as unknown.

All higher level geographies (Lower Layer Super Output Area/Data Zone, Middle Layer Super Output Area/Intermediate Zone, Local Authority, Region, Country) are derived from COA for both the Old and New regime.

Comparisons between the statistics

The nature of the process used to update the data (retrospection) means that it is difficult to compare data between years as the data set is constantly changing as / when mandatory reconsiderations and appeals are resolved. This means that the data from last year will be updated every quarter as new information about each sanction is added to it. The data shows that decisions can change significantly after one quarter. Decisions can still change a year after the initial sanction has been applied, though these changes are minimal.

The Income Support statistics included with the JSA, ESA, and UC sanction statistics are completely different from the standalone Income Support Lone Parents (ISLP) regime statistics that were published quarterly up to February 2017. The current statistics encompass all IS sanctions, rather than just the Lone Parents. Also, since April 2016, the sanction decisions started to go through the same process as JSA and ESA to allow standardisation across benefits. As such, the methods used in the ISLP statistics are not comparable to the current IS statistics as previously all decisions to apply a sanction were recorded, but not updated retrospectively when sanctions were lifted at a later date.

Whilst other countries also apply sanctions to their versions of JSA, ESA and IS, their systems are too different to allow any comparisons to be made.

The Monthly Rate of Claimants Sanctioned previously used the same methodology as the sanctions rate outlined in the 2015 publication explaining the methodological approach taken to calculate monthly sanctions rates using publicly available data. The only difference is that we presented a monthly rate, rather than an annual rate that was used in the ad-hoc.

The latest Monthly Rate of Claimants Sanctioned uses a completely different methodology to previously. The rate now looks at the number of claimants who have had a drop in payment due to a sanction on the same day of the month that the claimant count is taken, as opposed to all adverse decisions in a month. This means that comparisons should not be made.

Source of the statistics

The main bulk of the data is taken from the Decision Making and Appeal system (DMAS); the system which decision makers use to record decisions made. This is then complimented with data from the Decision Makers and Appeals Case Recorder (DMACR) system and the Labour Market System (LMS). DMACR is a relatively new system which brings in data on appeals and mandatory reconsiderations. LMS is the system used by the jobcentre to record details of doubts.

The durations data uses DMAS, the National Benefits Database (NBD) and General Matching Service (GMS). The NBD brings in on- and off-flows from each benefit, and GMS brings in payment data allowing the tracking of benefit reductions and increases.

The destinations data uses DMAS, DMACR, LMS and NBD data, with the NBD data being used to track the benefits that claimants flow on and off.

The NBD is also used to determine the medical condition for ESA claimants as the ICD code for each benefit claimant is held on this system.

The data is collated and put on Stat-Xplore for analysis. The variables include all sanction decisions made, and decisions made against individuals. These can then be viewed by month made, age, gender, ethnicity, geography, disability status, lone-parent status, decision types, outcomes, sanction level and referral reasons.

Stat-Xplore is available to the public to build tables of specific interest.

Up to and including May 2017 QSS, the Monthly Rate of Claimants Sanctioned for JSA was based on the number of decisions to apply a sanction (adverse) in a full calendar month divided by the point-in-time monthly JSA claimant count (from NOMIS), which relates to the number of people claiming JSA on the second Thursday of the month.

The Monthly Rate of Claimants Sanctioned for ESA prior to September 2016 was based on the number of decisions to apply a sanction (adverse) in a full calendar month divided by the ESA claimants in the WRAG group on the last day of the quarter. As the ESA WRAG caseload count previously published in the DWP Tabtool was a quarterly figure, a monthly rate was calculated by allocating the same value to the month either side of the actual count. An example of this can be seen in the table below:

Measure	Decision to apply a sanction (adverse)	ESA WRAG caseload	Monthly Rates of Claimants Sanctioned
July 2015	1,027	465,860	0.2%
August 2015	1,020	465,860	0.2%
September 2015	1,083	465,860	0.2%

As of September 2015, a monthly figure for the ESA claimants in the WRAG group was developed, which is now used (as of February 2017 QSS) in the calculation to provide a more accurate figure. Up to and including May 2017 QSS, the Monthly Rate of Claimants Sanctioned for ESA was based as previously on the number of decisions to apply a sanction (adverse) (available from Stat-Xplore) in a full calendar month but divided by the ESA claimants in the WRAG group on the last day of a calendar month. This figure is based on the same methodology used for the Quarterly figures but derived from internal monthly datasets. The ESA monthly counts are now published as part of the ESA Supporting Tables.

As of August 2017, a new method of calculating the Monthly Rate has been published. This rate involves using recently developed durations data to determine the number of claimants on JSA and ESA who have a drop in benefit due to a sanction on the same day of the month that the claimant count is taken for the respective benefits. The result is a Point-in-Time rate. More information about this new rate can be found in a separate background information document.

Rounding

Rounding has been applied to the sanctions statistics figures in the BSS. The headline figures and those accompanying the graphs have been rounded as follows:

From	To	Round to nearest
0	1,000	10
1,001	10,000	100
10,001	100,000	1,000
100,001	1,000,000	10,000
1,000,001	10,000,000	100,000
10,000,001	100,000,000	1,000,000

An exception has been made to the rounding in some sanction statistics tables. Some tables contain a range of numeric values and in these instances, the lower rounding band has been applied across the whole table.

Definitions within the statistics

There are certain terms used in the Benefit Sanctions Statistics publication that need explanation.

Jobseeker’s Allowance Sanction reason charts

Within the QSS and the BSS there are a series of charts which break down the sanction by reason. For the purposes of these charts, the reasons are grouped together, with the groupings shown in Table 1 along with the sanction level that each reason belongs to.

Table 1: Sanction Reasons and Level

Reason Group	Sanction Level
Work Programme
failure to participate in a scheme for assisting person to obtain employment without good reason - Work Programme	Lower
Work Focused Interviews/Work Search Reviews/Jobseeker’s Directions
failure to attend or failure to participate in an Adviser interview without good reason	Lower
failure to attend Back to Work Session without good reason	Old scheme
refusal or failure to comply with a Jobseeker’s Direction without good reason	Lower
failure to attend or failure to participate in an advisor interview without good reason (pre April 2010)	Old scheme
Availability for Work
jobseeker’s Agreement questions	Old Scheme
not actively seeking employment	Intermediate
refusal or failure to apply for, or accept if offered, a job which an employment officer has informed him/her is vacant or about to become vacant without good reason	Higher
not being available for work	Intermediate
neglect to avail themselves of a reasonable opportunity of employment without good reason	Higher
Other Employment Programmes
failure to attend a place on a training scheme or employment programme without good reason	Lower
losing through misconduct a place on a training scheme or employment programme	Lower
voluntarily leaves a place on a training scheme or employment programme without good reason	Lower
neglect to avail themselves of a reasonable opportunity of a place on a training scheme or employment programme without good reason	Lower
refusal of a place on a training scheme or employment programme without good reason	Lower
failure to participate in Mandatory Work Activity without good reason	Higher
failure to participate in a scheme for assisting person to obtain employment without good reason - Skills Conditionality	Lower
failure to participate in a scheme for assisting person to obtain employment without good reason - other scheme	Lower
failure to participate in a scheme for assisting person to obtain employment without good reason - Work Experience	Lower
failure to participate in supervised job search	Lower
Reason for Leaving Previous Employment
left employment voluntarily without good reason	Higher
losing employment through misconduct	Higher
Other (Not Included in Summary Charts)
other referral reason	Unknown
joint Claim exemption	Old Scheme
trade disputes	Old Scheme

Definitions of decisions

Adverse – Decision to apply a sanction.

Non-adverse – Decision to not apply a sanction or lift one already applied.

Reserved – JSA only – Decision to apply a sanction cannot be imposed because the claimant is currently not entitled to/claiming JSA.

Cancelled – The referral is cancelled without a sanction being applied.

ESA access changes to the Work Programme in October 2011

This refers to a change in ESA policy. From the 4 October 2011 new ESA claimants who were placed in the WRAG group after their initial Work Capability Assessment (WCA) were required to attend the initial Jobcentre Plus Work Focused Interview (WFI) and the subsequent series of WFI.

Revisions to the statistics

DWP have a policy for planned revisions describing how we will handle revisions and give confidence that all revisions will be handled in a transparent manner. For Jobseeker’s Allowance and Employment and Support Allowance Sanction Official Statistics, to reflect any updates to the figures, the full historic statistical series is refreshed each time the figures are released. This process will also be applied to the IS and UC Official Statistics.

We allow some time for additional information to be incorporated into DWP’s data systems. This time period is referred to as retrospection. Information may be submitted, corrected or resubmitted sometime after the event occurred. This means data presented in each release is subject to some retrospection and figures may be revised in subsequent releases, especially the final few months.

For example, if a decision to apply a sanction is made, the data may then be published before the next steps are commenced. If all the steps are gone through in order, there might be some time before the final stage; sometimes a year after the initial decision to sanction has been made.

The methodology for how residence-based geographies are derived, as outlined in the Limitations of the statistics section, changed in the February 2018 release of the statistics. This means that figures, by residence-based geography (for example, Local Authority), released from this point will not be directly comparable to those published previously. The changes will mainly affect ESA and JSA (New regime) figures. The impact for ESA and JSA (Old regime), IS and UC will be minimal. The exact level of revision will vary dependent on the time period and type of geography selected. Users are therefore advised to recreate any figures that include a residence-based geography breakdown using the new data.

Status of the statistics

Official Statistics

We have reviewed the Official Statistics in Development label on the Benefit Sanctions Statistics, following the reinstated duration measures and rate methodology improvements. We have determined that the UC data and sanctions methodology is now stable and fit for purpose, and as such we are removing the “in development” label. As of 14 May 2024, these statistics will be published under the “Official Statistics” label.

We will continue to progress developments to meet user needs through the DWP Statistical Work Programme. Read for more information on types of official statistics.

The Jobseeker’s Allowance and Employment and Support Allowance Sanction Official Statistics show numbers of decisions that have been referred to sanction. Breakdowns are available by age, gender, ethnicity, lone parent status (for Jobseeker’s Allowance claimants only), decision outcome, decision type and geography.

Official statistics are produced to be compliant with the code of practice but have not yet been assessed by the UK Stats Authority in order to be National Statistics.

For more information, see types of official statistics.

Official Statistics

The JSA and ESA monthly rate calculation and duration statistics, and the IS sanction statistics are classed as official statistics.

Quality Statement

Our statistical practice is regulated by the Office for Statistics Regulation (OSR).

OSR sets the standards of trustworthiness, quality and value in the Code of Practice for Statistics that all producers of official statistics should adhere to.

You are welcome to contact us directly with any comments about how we meet these standards by sending us an email at epass.team@dwp.gov.uk

Alternatively, you can contact OSR by emailing regulation@statistics.gov.uk or via the OSR website.

A standard set of quality assurance procedures are conducted for each statistical release. They consist of checking for duplicate, missing, or contradictory information, trends and variations in characteristics, time series and geographical breakdowns.

They follow a set path (1 to 9):

1. Data comes in from Data Sources.

2. Verified against internal Management Information and Caseload groups to quality assure trends and variations.

3. Processed and any errors in the process noted and corrected.

4. Quality Assured at the end of the processing run against previous runs to ensure there are no discrepancies in the data.

5. Tables produced based on templates to ensure consistency across time.

6. Tables compared to previous tables looking at percentage differences for changes in trends.

7. Publication updated with new figures and graphs whilst ensuring that changes in the data are within expected limits.

8. Publication data and Supplementary tables recreated as a quality assurances of the data at least twice.

9. Publication.

The Quality Assurance of Administrative Data (QAAD) details the quality assurance measures and processes on the data used in the production of the Benefit Sanctions Statistics.

Feedback

We welcome feedback

To give feedback on the Jobseeker’s Allowance and Employment and Support Allowance Official Statistics, or the Income Support Official Statistics, you can:

Email: epass.team@dwp.gov.uk

Write to:

Tracy Hills
Development Team Client Statistics
Digital, Data and Analytics
Room BP5201
Benton Park View
Longbenton
Newcastle Upon Tyne
NE98 1YX

Useful links

The Benefit sanction statistics publication

The previous Quarterly Statistical Summary where Benefit sanction statistics were published up to August 2017

Read the JSA, ESA, IS and UC sanction statistics, including the links to the most recent statistics in Excel tables, the link to this document, to the UC Background Information and Methodology document, the Durations and Rate methodology document and the Benefit Destinations methodology document

Read the Jobseeker’s Allowance sanctions

Read the Employment and Support Allowance sanctions

See the Hardship payments

Stat-Xplore can be used to tabulate any of the information available on sanctions

Read the publication strategy for sanctions

See all the statistics available from DWP

See the schedule for upcoming statistical releases from DWP

Read the Monthly Rate ad-hoc publication method

Read the overview of sanctions regime changes

Read the income Support Lone Parent sanctions