Accredited official statistics

Quality Report - Child and Working Tax Credits statistics: Provisional awards - April 2024

Published 26 June 2024

1. Introduction

These statistics focus on the number of families benefiting from Child Tax Credit (CTC) and/or Working Tax Credit (WTC) in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland as at 1 April 2024.

Tax credits were introduced in April 2003 replacing Working Families’ Tax Credit, Disabled Person’s Tax Credit and Children’s Tax Credit. They are an important part of the Government’s policy aims to provide adequate financial incentives to work, reduce child poverty and to increase financial support for all families.

WTC provides in-work support for people on low incomes, with or without children. It is available for in-work support to people who are aged at least 16 and meet a certain criteria.

CTC provides income-related support for children and qualifying young people aged 16 to 19 who are in full time, non-advanced education or approved training into a single tax credit, payable to the main carer. Families can claim CTC whether or not the adults are in work.

More information about tax credits eligibility can be found on GOV.UK.

2. Statistical presentation

The provisional awards statistics consists of a series of tables and graphs showing the latest data on tax credits. The aggregate statistics on tax credit support is broken down into various subcategories: family composition, family income, work status, age and gender and geographical analyses.

The statistics also show breakdowns of families benefiting from each of the different elements of tax credits and provides information on the income used in calculating awards and the frequency of payments.

3. Statistical Processing

3.1 Source data

The main source data used to create the provisional awards statistical publication is the tax credits interim dataset from HMRC’s tax credits administration system.

3.2 Data collection

The interim dataset for this publication is a snapshot of all families receiving CTC or WTC at the reference date of 1 April 2024.

3.3 Data validation

Checks carried out on the data include:

• analysts check that the number of records loaded into the analysis database is as expected.
• analysts check that the number of records as we go through the code is as expected for different files created. These are compared to previous years publications.
• any large changes in the number of claimants from one statistical release to the next are investigated.

4. Quality management

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

The Child and Working Tax Credits Statistics were independently reviewed by the Office for Statistics Regulation in June 2010. They comply with the standards of trustworthiness, quality and value in the Code of Practice for Statistics and should be labelled ‘accredited official statistics’. Accredited official statistics are called National Statistics in the Statistics and Registration Service Act 2007.

4.1 Quality Assurance

All official statistics produced by Knowledge, Analysis and Intelligence (KAI), must meet the standards in the Code of Practice for Statistics produced by the UK Statistics Authority and all analysts adhere to best practice as set out in the ‘Quality’ pillar.

Analytical Quality Assurance describes the arrangements and procedures put in place to ensure analytical outputs are error free and fit-for-purpose. It is an essential part of KAI’s way of working as the complexity of our work and the speed at which we are asked to provide advice means there is a high risk of error which can have serious consequences on KAI’s and HMRC’s reputation, decisions, and in turn on peoples’ lives.

Every piece of analysis is unique, and as a result there is no single quality assurance (QA) checklist that contains all the QA tasks needed for every project. Nonetheless, analysts in KAI use a checklist that summarises the key QA tasks, and is used as a starting point for teams when they are considering what QA actions to undertake.

Teams amend and adapt it as they see fit, to take account of the level of risk associated with their analysis, and the different QA tasks that are relevant to the work.

At the start of a project, during the planning stage, analysts and managers make a risk-based decision on what level of QA is required.

Analysts and managers construct a plan for all the QA tasks that will need to be completed, along with documentation on how each of those tasks are to be carried out and turn this list into a QA checklist specific to the project.

Analysts carry out the QA tasks, update the checklist, and pass onto the Senior Responsible Officer for review and eventual sign off.

4.2 Quality assessment

The QA for this project adhered to the framework described in ‘Quality assurance’ and the specific procedures undertaken were as follows:

Stage 1 – Specifying the question

Previous documentation was reviewed and outputs were agreed with the relevant stakeholders.

Stage 2 – Developing a methodology

The methodology used for the previous year’s analysis was reviewed and was agreed with my team to be appropriate for producing these statistics.

Stage 3 – Building and populating a model and/or piece of code

The process now uses Reproducible Analytical Pipelines (RAPs) to ensure quality and reproducibility. Data inputs were checked to ensure they were fit-for-purpose by reviewing available documentation and, where possible, through direct contact with data suppliers. QA of the input data was carried out. The analysis was audited by someone other than the lead analyst – checking code and methodology.

Stage 4 – Running and testing the model and/or code

Results were compared with those produced in previous years and differences understood and determined to be genuine. Results were determined to be explainable and in line with expectations.

Stage 5 – Drafting the final outputs

Checks were completed to ensure internal consistency (for example totals equal the sum of the components). The final outputs were independently proofread and checked.

5. Relevance

The Provisional Awards statistics are currently published bi-annually, in February or March and June or July. These statistics are as close to real-time as possible and represent the picture as at the beginning of April and December. These are National Statistics and the month of publication is indicated on HMRC’s release schedule with the exact date being published at least 28 days before its release on HMRC’s statistics release calendar. National Statistics are accredited official statistics.

The statistics contained in this publication will be of interest to anyone who is looking for the latest possible data on tax credits. Specifically, there are statistics on the level of tax credit support received based upon family size, type of family, as well as the number of children in benefitting families, broken down by age.

Finally, the geographical analyses might be of interest at the more local level, giving some indication of the level of government support in each region and local authority in the UK.

6. Accuracy and Reliability

The published tables are based on 100% data of families receiving CTC or WTC at the reference date of 1 April 2024.

The provisional numbers relate to the caseload position at a snapshot point in time, based on the family circumstances we have been informed of by each family prior to that particular time.

The finalised awards (published in June or July each year) relate to the complete retrospective picture for the year, based on a finalised view of family incomes and circumstances. The caseload population will be different, (so it should be noted that they are NOT a revision as such for this reason) between the 2 publications as a result of HMRC knowing the complete finalised picture of the award.

7. Revision policy

This policy has been developed in accordance with the UK Statistics Authority Code of Practice for Official Statistics and HMRC’s Revisions Policy. The HMRC official statistics policies can be found on GOV.UK.

There are 2 types of revisions:

7.1 Scheduled revisions

Regular, scheduled revisions due to the receipt of updated information since the previous statistical publication.

7.2 Unscheduled revisions

HMRC aims to avoid the need for unscheduled revisions to publications unless they are absolutely necessary and put systems and processes in place to minimise the number of revisions. Where revisions are necessary due to errors in the statistical process, an explanation along with the nature and extent of revision is also provided. The statistical release and the accompanying tables will be updated and published as soon as is practical.

8. Timeliness and punctuality

The provisional awards statistics is produced bi-annually with enough time to produce the analysis, carry out quality assurance and prepare the right format for publication. The release has since been published each year on the pre-announced date.

9. Accessibility and clarity

HMRC has an increased focus on accessibility and all documents published for this release have met the Department’s accessibility requirements.

Provisional tax credits statistics are free and accessible to users via the Research and Statistics page on GOV.UK.

Recent provisional tax credits statistics are found in the Personal tax credits statistics page on GOV.UK.

Published statistics from previous years are available on the National Archives website and can be accessed using the following links:

• Personal tax credits statistics (published July 2013 onwards)
• Personal tax credits statistics (published before July 2013)

Publications are available in PDF and Excel formats and can easily be downloaded by users. The latest statistics publication is available in HTML and Open Document Spreadsheet (ODS) formats in compliance with the new accessibility requirements.

10. Trade-offs between output quality components

We are committed to ensuring these statistics are as accurate as possible and to minimise revisions due to errors, as such, the data will be published in a timely manner taking into account the time needed to carry out full and robust quality assurance.

The provisional tax credit statistics in April, models entitlement for the whole year; even though they are a snapshot picture compiled using the data as at 1 April 2024.

It is not until finalisation (and thereby in the finalised award data publication) that a complete retrospective picture for the year, based on a finalised view of family incomes and circumstances, is known. So, the trade-off that should be considered is that figures for provisional awards are more up to date, but are subject to retrospective change.

The sizes of these changes can be seen by comparing the data for selected dates in finalised awards with data published earlier on provisional awards at the same snapshot dates.

The provisional award data tables classify families according to the levels of their entitlement at the reference date, modelled from data on their circumstances and their latest annual incomes reported and processed by that date. The actual amount being received at that date can be lower, due to the recovery of earlier overpayments.

The tables describe as ‘recipients’ all families with positive modelled entitlement, though in some cases the payments are reduced to zero.

11. Assessment of user needs and perceptions

Users can provide feedback by using the contact details provided in the publication.

12. Performance, cost and respondent burden

Most of the datasets used for this analysis are taken from the tax credits administrative data and therefore the cost of carrying out this analysis is minimal. The compilation of these statistics does not impose any additional burden on employees or employers.

13. Confidentiality, transparency and security

All datasets used for these statistics are stored in a Controlled Access Folder (CAF) which are accessible to only a few analysts who are part of the production team and therefore have business need to access the data.

HMRC is committed is to the efficient management of information as such our records are compliant with:

• UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR) 2018
• The Data Protection Act 2018
• The Data Protection Act 1998
• The Public Records Act 1968
• The Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOI) (in particular the Code of Practice on Records Management issued under s46 FOI which requires that public authorities have effective record-keeping arrangements in place).

Under the guidelines for pre-release access, information contained in the tables is not given out in final form one day before publication and then only to nominated officials and ministers whose names are published on the HMRC website.

To avoid the possible disclosure of information about individual families, values have been supressed when underlying counts are low. An entry of “low’’ in a table indicates that the data has been rounded down to 0 or has been withheld in line with HMRC’s Dominance and Disclosure policy.

14. Contact details

Benefits and credits statistics

Media contact: HMRC Press Office

Statistical contact: L Bircham