Management Information: 1 March to 12 April 2020 supporting explanatory note
Published 21 April 2020
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This publication is available at https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/universal-credit-29-april-2013-to-12-march-2020/management-information-1-march-to-12-april-2020-supporting-explanatory-note
Read the latest release of the Universal Credit declarations (claims) and advances: management information.
Introduction
These management information (MI) tables and official statistics are drawn from data extracts from the administrative systems used to manage and process claims for Universal Credit.
The management information is a view of what is recorded on the administrative data and have not been quality assured and processed to the standards required to be official statistics.
Moreover, they will not have been derived to the same methodology as official statistics, and therefore the MI and official statistics will not be directly comparable.
See the guidance tab in the accompanying tables for more information.
Universal Credit declarations
Since the start of the pandemic, there has been unprecedented levels of demand for Universal Credit.
DWP received 1.8 million declarations to Universal Credit from individuals (from 16 March to 12 April 2020).
This is almost 5 times higher than the amount of declarations received from individuals in the same period last year.
There were 1.4 million declarations to Universal Credit from households (from 16 March to 12 April 2020) and 1.5 million declarations to Universal Credit from households (from 1 March to 12 April 2020).
The number of declarations during this period is equivalent to 50% of the number of individuals on Universal Credit at 12 March 2020. However, the caseload will not necessarily increase by 50% as some of these declarations will not go on to start receiving Universal Credit.
During periods of peak volumes, and following the Chancellor’s announcement on additional support for the self-employed, declarations peaked at over 100,000 per day in late March.
Whilst there is still an increase in volumes compared to normal business, these are now beginning to fall. Last week the number of Universal Credit declarations started to return to the level seen prior to the self-employment announcements.
Although future declaration volumes are highly uncertain, high volumes can be expected to continue in the short term.
Advance Payments
At the time of publication, the proportions of advance payments cannot yet be calculated as this is normally presented as the percentage of claims which reach the first payment stage and this point has not yet passed for the relevant declarations. The aim is to provide this information alongside future release of the Official Statistics.
The volume of advance payments has seen a large increase which coincides with the increased number of Universal Credit claims. In the 4-week period to 12 April 2020 over 513,000 advance payments were issued compared to 183,000 in the preceding 4 weeks.
The majority of these are new claim and benefit transfer advances which are available to those new to Universal Credit although an increase has also been seen in the budgeting and change of circumstances advances available to those already claiming Universal Credit.