Income-related benefits: estimates of take-up
Estimates of the take-up of the main income-related benefits by caseload and expenditure in Great Britain.
Upcoming release
The statistics for FYE 2024 will be published on Thursday 30 October 2025.
The FYE 2024 publication only focuses on pension age income related benefits:
- Pension Credit
- Housing Benefit
There is a specific challenge in creating a Universal Credit (UC) take-up measure and interpreting and communicating its results within the scope of the Code of Practice for Statistics. We are therefore unable to estimate UC take-up rates at present. For more information regarding this, please see the release strategy document
Key updates in the upcoming release
From FYE 2024, we have incorporated improved linking of administrative data to the Family Resources Survey, to better identify those in receipt of Pension Credit or Housing Benefit. Take-up estimates were already based on administrative data linking and there will be minimal impacts to estimates with this latest improvement to the approach used. This methodological change will be implemented from FYE 2024 going forwards and will not be backdated to previous years.
From FYE 2024, a further change in methodology has been introduced, moving to an approach which uses more extensive calibration to derive sample weights for the survey data, used to obtain estimates for Entitled Non-Recipient cases. The additional calibration improves the representativeness of the weighted survey sample, with respect to benefit caseloads, which refines the weights for the sample of Entitled Non-Recipient cases. It also ensures a consistent approach with other statistics. Investigations show minimal impacts of this change on figures. This methodological change will be implemented from FYE 2024 going forwards and will not be backdated to previous years.
A few small errors were identified in the historical data tables. They have been corrected in the data tables for this release and so previous data tables should not be used.
Ad hoc release
On Thursday 30 October 2025, DWP will also publish an ad-hoc statistical release called ‘Analysis of households potentially eligible for Pension Credit, and eligible households in receipt of Pension Credit: 2023 to 2024’, at the same time as the main publication ‘Income-related benefits: estimates of take-up: financial year ending 2024’.
Further information
Find future publication dates in our statistics release calendar and other DWP statistics on the Statistics at DWP page.
If you have any queries about this re-instatement, please contact irb.takeup@dwp.gov.uk
Note, our statistical practice is regulated by the Office for Statistics Regulation (OSR).
Latest release
Release strategy
This release strategy acts as the formal notice of changes to any future releases of the income-related benefits: estimates of take-up publication.
The strategy describes the potential release of new statistics within the publication and announces any other developments for future publications.
The income-related benefits: estimates of take-up release strategy is not a static document; it will be updated as plans develop, to provide users with details of latest developments.
Previous releases
There are older releases of these statistics on the National Archives website.
Background information and guidance
These statistics are designed to give an estimate of the take-up of benefits within the entitled population. They aim to provide an indication of whether and to what extent the different benefits are taken up by different groups.
The statistics can be used to
- increase awareness of take-up for particular benefits
- inform government policies
- measure the effect of take-up initiatives
Additional details of how the statistics are commonly used can be found in the usage of income-related benefits report on the National Archives website.
Read a guide to sources of data on earnings and income as well as further information on income and earning statistics, both published by the Office for National Statistics.
Updates to this page
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Added a note to the page about an upcoming release of statistics on 30 October 2025.
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Added a link to the latest release of statistics: Income-related benefits: estimates of take-up: financial year ending 2023
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Added information to the page about the next release of income-related benefits statistics. The next release will be published on 10 October 2024.
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Added a link to the latest release of statistics: 'Income-related benefits: estimates of take-up: financial year ending 2022'.
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Added a note to the page about the next release of income-related benefits statistics. The next release will be published on 26 October 2023.
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Replaced 'Suspension of the 2020 to 2021 estimates' with information about the 'Re-instatement of the 2021 to 2022 estimates'.
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Added a note to the page about the suspension of the estimates for the financial year 2020 to 2021.
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Added a link to the latest release of statistics: 'Income-related benefits: estimates of take-up: financial year 2019 to 2020'.
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Added a statistical notice to this collection. The notice has information about a change to the next release of Income-related benefits: estimates of take-up official statistics, due to be released on 24 February 2022.
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Added a link to the latest release of these statistics 'Income-related benefits: estimates of take-up: financial year 2018 to 2019'.
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Added the latest release of these statistics 'Income-related benefits: estimates of take-up: financial year 2017 to 2018'.
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Added latest statistics for 'Income-related benefits: estimates of take-up: financial year 2016 to 2017'.
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Added 'Changes in the income-related benefits: estimates of take-up 2016 to 2017: statistical notice' to the background information and guidance documents.
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Added latest stats for Income-related benefits: estimates of take-up for financial year 2015/16.
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Added 'Income-related benefits: estimates of take-up: statistical notice' to related documents.
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Added latest stats for Income-related benefits: estimates of take-up for financial year 2014/15.
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Added latest stats for Income-related benefits: estimates of take-up for financial year 2013/14.
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Amended the date of the next release which is now provisionally due to be published in May or June 2015. This has been changed to allow time to quality assure changes to methodology (the methods used to produce the statistics).
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Published details of next scheduled release for these statistics (January to February 2015).
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First published.