Guidance

Income-related benefits: estimates of take-up FYE 2020: statistical notice

Statistical notice about a change to the next release of income-related benefits: estimates of take-up official statistics.

• From: Department for Work and Pensions
• Published: 27 January 2022

Applies to England, Scotland and Wales

This statistical notice advises users of one change to the next income-related benefits: estimates of take-up official statistics publication. The change will take effect for the financial year ending (FYE) 2020 publication, which is due to be released on 24 February 2022.

The change is:

• remove reporting on working age take-up from the next publication and focus only on pensioner age take-up. We will be ceasing publication of take-up rates for working age Housing Benefit and therefore restricting publication of take-up rates for Housing Benefit to pensioner age only. We will be ceasing publication of take-up rates for Income Support and income-related Employment and Support Allowance

Further details on these changes will be presented in the background and methodology report that will be published with the next statistics release on 24 February 2022.

If you have any queries on these changes, please send them to: irb.takeup@dwp.gov.uk

Background information

1. The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) uses a complex methodology to estimate the take-up of income-related benefits.

2. No new claims can be made for working-age Housing Benefit, income-based Jobseeker’s Allowance, Income Support, income-related Employment and Support Allowance and Tax Credits due to the rollout of Universal Credit.

3. Therefore, we can no longer produce take-up estimates of working-age Housing Benefit and Income Support and income-related Employment and Support Allowance. We have restricted take-up rates for Housing Benefit for pensioners only.

4. We will continue to publish Pension Credit take-up.

5. Whilst there are people in receipt of legacy benefits there is no practical way to estimate Universal Credit take-up rates for the purposes of estimating take-up statistics within the scope of the Code of Practice for Statistics.

Published 27 January 2022