Guidance

Statistical work programme

Updated 3 April 2024

Applies to England, Scotland and Wales

Foreword

This publication sets out the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) statistical work programme. DWP is the UK’s largest public service department responsible for both policy and reporting of areas including:

• employment
• pensions
• poverty
• welfare
• benefit expenditure

The statistical work programme outlines developments to DWP official statistics. It reports changes delivered from April 2020 in statistical methodology and specific measures used in areas such as

• housing
• income
• employment
• welfare

In addition, this document brings together both publication-specific and cross-departmental plans for future developments into a single programme.

The statistical work programme has been released to remain transparent about our official statistics, adhering to our DWP revision policy, the DWP statistics user engagement strategy and the UK Statistics Authority’s Code of Practice.

The variety of data sources, collection techniques and statistical measures implemented by DWP is reflected in the range of future developments. These developments may be in one of several domains such as dissemination techniques, where a team may update terminology or reporting-style to improve the accessibility of publications; or could be technology-centric, involving plans to incorporate online tools such as Stat-Xplore.

DWP official statistics are produced and published in line with the 3 pillars of the Code of Practice for Statistics:

1. Trustworthiness – by committing to the highest standards of integrity and transparency
2. Quality – by regularly assessing our methodology and exploring opportunities for development and synergy between teams – hence the introduction of a Statistical Work Programme
3. Value – by remaining engaged with the main users and stakeholders of DWP official statistics.

The statistical work programme is published in line with T4.2 of the Code of Practice for Statistics to ensure that we are open and transparent about our progress towards meeting our priorities and objectives whilst ensuring users and stakeholders can help us prioritise our statistical plans.

Steve Ellerd-Elliott
Head of Profession for Statistics, Department for Work and Pensions
Email: statistics.hopsupport@dwp.gov.uk

1. Statistics at DWP

DWP analysts are committed to producing accurate, timely, high quality official statistics publications to inform government policy development and operational decision-making. DWP takes into account user needs and produces and disseminates its statistics in accordance with the UK Statistics Authority’s Code of Practice for Statistics. DWP Official Statistics are used by a range of users, including:

• DWP Ministers
• DWP policy and operational officials
• Ministers and officials in other government departments
• Parliament
• local authorities
• external interest groups
• the media and external commentators
• academics
• charities
• members of the public

The department currently releases around 40 Official and National statistics series each year, as well as collaborating to support a number of cross-government publications. Further detail of types of official statistics is on the UK Statistics Authority website.

A full list of DWP statistical publications can be found in Annex C.

Statistical publications are announced in the GOV.UK statistics release calendar and published on the DWP statistics GOV.UK page.

The department disseminates its statistics in a variety of ways, as for any set of statistics there could be a range of users accessing the data:

• first release statistical bulletins include simple headline findings, text and graphs. The statistics are put into context and include footnotes and caveats. Alongside the bulletins, DWP publishes methodology documents which include details of the users and uses of the statistics, how data is collected and processed, the quality assurance process and provides contextual information to aid understanding of the statistics

• statistical tables provide what the department sees as the most important breakdowns meeting most user needs

• Stat-Xplore is an interactive open data tool to interrogate data where the user can build their own tables and graphs with full level of granularity available

• interactive maps and dashboards enable the user to explore and customise DWP statistics

The varied approach to disseminating statistics is in accordance with the department’s quality policy.

As well as producing and developing statistics, we also provide comprehensive briefing for ministers and policy teams and draft responses to numerous Parliamentary Questions, Freedom of Information requests and ad hoc queries.

2. Developing how we deliver DWP statistics

There are new approaches and tools available that can improve our data, processes and dissemination of statistics. This will increase efficiency, drive up quality and allow us to add more value and insight. To make this happen we are investing time and resource to take forward developments and raise capability for users inside DWP, across government and external, including academics, the media and the public.

Each development to our statistics follows a 4-stage process.

1. Stage 1: Discovery stage – user requirements for new statistics and proposed changes to existing statistics are gathered by analysts.

2. Stage 2: Internal user engagement – liaising with internal stakeholders including policy, operations and external communications and Ministers.

3. Stage 3: Public consultation – active engagement with external users on the change

4. Stage 4: Publication – approved changes are confirmed with users.

We have 4 priority areas for cross-departmental development:

• user engagement
• reproducible analytical pipelines
• devolution
• linking survey administrative data

In earlier versions of the Statistical Work Programme, we listed Examine-a-Stat, an interactive statistical tool, as an additional priority. We still hope to use Examine-a-Stat, but there are significant technical and security issues that need to be overcome first, so we have removed this as a priority at present.

2.1. User Engagement

DWP is aware of the importance and the need to engage with its users and has utilised expert advice from the Government Statistical Service (GSS) to support this engagement.

Within DWP, user engagement is used to:

• prioritise statistical work, for example to consider whether to produce new statistics to meet identified information gaps; continue, discontinue or adapt existing statistical series
• understand and refresh our understanding of the use and potential use of DWP statistics and data
• understand user satisfaction with the relevance and usefulness of our statistics
• maximise the use of our statistics

This is in line with the User Engagement Strategy for Statistics released by the GSS and the DWP User Engagement Strategy.

The 3 goals of the strategy are to:

1. Collaborate across boundaries to offer a more coherent user experience
2. Build capability and equip producers of statistics with the practical skills and tools to deliver effective user engagement activities
3. Strengthen our culture and ensure user engagement is always an ongoing and essential part of a statistics producers role

Alongside the Strategy the Code of Practice for Statistics states:

Users of statistics and data should be at the centre of statistical production; their needs should be understood, their views sought and acted upon, and their use of statistics supported.

Currently DWP has multiple products that enhance its user engagement.

• Stat-Xplore is DWP’s open data tool, providing a guided way to explore benefit related data sets for over 7,000 users, spanning a range of subject areas and statistical reports now up to 25 – and growing
• The visualisation dashboards, our web applications, which we use to gather experience and delve into innovative ways to explore and visualise the data sets of our major statistical publications
• User consultations to seek up to date feedback on our statistical products. For example, DWP held a consultation in 2019 with users of a number of their statistical publications, so as to gauge the value of the current frequency of releases
• Active engagement through publication team in-boxes and statistician lead contacts. Details of how to contact each publication team are found on each publication. In each publication, DWP asks for feedback from the user
• The Family Finance Surveys User Conference is held every year. It offers users of survey publications a chance to connect with DWP and ONS colleagues, and also to share great ideas on how the various official publications can be used.  The conference is one of the main avenues by which DWP and ONS communicate the latest developments in our statistics.
• In 2022, the conference was run on a virtual basis.  Around 100 people attended.  Attendees came from a wide range of sectors, including academic institutions, think tanks, and local and central government.

DWP is always striving to improve user engagement and has projects in development to meet that objective.

These projects are detailed in the following sections.

2.2. Reproducible Analytical Pipelines (RAP)

Reproducible Analytical Pipelines (RAPs) use code to improve the underlying processes that produce statistics, so that the same statistical outputs are produced in a more robust way. While the implementation of RAP is a major change, the analytical outputs themselves remain unchanged, with the same content, coverage, appearance, formatting, timing and scheduling.

The implementation of RAP to the underlying processes has a range of benefits, as outlined in the Reproducible Analytical Pipelines strategy:

• it improves the quality of the analysis, by reducing human error
• it makes quality assurance easier
• it makes the process more efficient
• it ultimately improves trust in our statistics

DWP is committed to implementing RAP, wherever it adds value, throughout our analytical community. Our strategy is that DWP’s published statistics will lead the way in implementation of RAP within the department, with the aim of publishing our first statistical publication using end-to-end RAP processes in 2024. We do not yet have access to the tools required to do this so have extended our target to deliver this into 2024 but, in the meantime, we are working to introduce aspects of RAP principles using our existing tools, and published a statistics bulletin and tables using elements of RAP principles in August 2023. Once the tools are available, we will roll out RAP across our other published statistics and, where appropriate, to other analysis in DWP.

To do this, we must address a range of barriers, including those identified in the RAP strategy:

• tools
• capability
• culture

In terms of tools, there are various technological barriers to overcome. These barriers are especially significant in DWP, for 2 main reasons:

• first, our analytical community is large, which means the tools need to be scalable and cloud-ready

• second, our statistical products use claimant data, so we must be certain both that the data is secure and the tools use this data securely

We must also consider the balance between cost-effectiveness and the benefits of using open-source software, especially given the potential cost of external support contracts. Our implementation of RAP will take longer due to these factors.

In terms of capability, we have already begun to upskill analysts in software engineering techniques, open-source programming languages and wider knowledge of the benefits of RAP. This is a large endeavour, especially given the size of our analytical community, since people will need to learn new skills while continuing to deliver a high volume of existing work. In the early stages, upskilling is likely to be sequential, as the team supporting the roll-out work with one statistical team at a time to convert their publication to RAP. In the longer term, with the skillset required being common not only within different areas of DWP, but also across different departments, we hope that analysts will upskill and maintain those skills themselves and support the upskilling and sharing of skills with each other.

Because it is important that RAP skills align with wider analytical skills, we will deliver RAP capability as part of our wider strategy around analytical capability. We will follow the RAP strategy in prioritising “just-in-time” learning: that is, training analysts in RAP when the skills are needed in their area. This helps analysts to retain new skills, since the training is closely followed by hands-on development, as they implement RAP processes in their work, followed by ongoing continued usage.

In terms of culture, we have already begun to build RAP awareness and capability within our statistical community, through a range of methods including centralised communications and training both in high-level principles and specific skills. RAP appears as one of five priorities within our published statistical work programme and we have ensured it is considered in other areas of statistical development, such as our internal guidance on accessibility. As RAP rolls out across the analytical community, our Senior Analytical Leadership Team will lead in building interest and engagement in RAP, championing and emphasising the benefits of RAP as the default way to produce analysis.

The senior sponsor for Reproducible Analytical Pipelines for analysis within DWP is the Chief Analyst, Trevor Huddleston, and the sponsor for RAP within statistics is the Chief Statistician, Steve Ellerd-Elliott.

2.3. Devolution

The Scotland Act 2016 received Royal Assent in March 2016. The Social Security (Scotland) Bill received Royal Assent on 1 June 2018. As a result, legislative and delivery powers are being devolved to the Scottish Government in several areas.

The transfer of benefits to the Scottish Government will impact on the Official Statistics that DWP produce. Official Statistics impacted include:

• Carer’s Allowance
• Disability Living Allowance (DLA)
• Personal Independence Payment (PIP)
• Attendance Allowance (AA)
• Severe Disablement Allowance (SDA)
• Industrial Injuries Disablement Benefit (IIDB)
• Benefit Combinations
• Cold Weather Payments
• Winter Fuel Payment
• Alternative Claimant Count
• Children in Low Income Families

From September 2018, recipients of Carer’s Allowance who live in Scotland have been eligible for Carer’s Allowance Supplement, which will raise their Carer’s Allowance to the equivalent of the current rate of Jobseeker’s Allowance for 25 and over. Carer’s Allowance Supplement payments are paid twice a year to people who are in receipt of Carer’s Allowance on the Carer’s Allowance Supplement eligibility dates set by the Scottish Government (April and October). Social Security Scotland have published information on recipients of Carer’s Allowance Supplement. DWP will continue to publish the same Carer’s Allowance statistics as we do currently that cover the whole of Great Britain.

From 1 April 2020, the Scottish Government became responsible for disability and industrial injury benefits for people living in Scotland. DWP will however continue to deliver these benefits on behalf of Scottish Government, on the same basis as prior to 1 April 2020, until the Scottish Government introduces its own replacement benefits. This will happen in the next few years but with some delay due to the impact of the coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak on Scottish Government plans for the transfer.

Child Disability Payment is the first of the application-based disability benefits to be introduced by the Scottish Government. It replaces Disability Living Allowance for children that was administered by DWP. From 26 July 2021, new applications were taken in Scotland for Child Disability Payment for children under 16 that live in the pilot areas of Dundee City, Na h-Eileanan Siar and Perth and Kinross. On 22 November 2021, Child Disability Payment launched nationwide to all new applicants living in Scotland.

The Disability Living Allowance figures presented to the end of August 2021 overlapped with the launch of Child Disability Payment in the pilot areas in Scotland detailed above. This overlap accounts for approximately 5 weeks where new applications for Child Disability Payment in these areas were taken. Data on applications and payments made for this time period is available. Due to the short time period and limited areas that applicants could apply from, the number of applications received were small and have had a very limited impact on Disability Living Allowance for child numbers. From August 2022, DWP will present totals for England and Wales, where DWP is retaining policy ownership, and a separate breakdown for Scotland where we are administering claims on behalf of the Scottish Government.

Adult Disability Payment is the second of the application-based disability benefits to be introduced by the Scottish Government. It replaces Personal Independence Payment that was administered by DWP. From 21 March 2022, new applications were taken in Scotland for Adult Disability Payment for those who live in the pilot areas of Dundee City, Na h-Eileanan Siar and Perth and Kinross. Adult Disability Payment has launched nationwide to all new applicants living in Scotland from August 2022.

The Personal Independence Payment figures presented to the end of April 2022 overlaps with the launch of Adult Disability Payment in the pilot areas in Scotland detailed above. This overlap accounts for approximately 6 weeks where new applications for Adult Disability Payment in these areas were taken. Data on applications and payment made for this time period is available. Due to the short time period and limited areas that applicants could apply from, the number of applications received were small and have had a very limited impact on Personal Independence Payment numbers. From September 2022, DWP has presented totals for England and Wales, where DWP is retaining policy ownership, and a separate breakdown for Scotland where we are administering claims on behalf of the Scottish Government. Further information on the presentation of DLA and PIP can be found on the DWP Benefit Statistics page.

Scottish Devolution will also impact the fraud and error in the benefit system publication. Existing publications include data from Scotland; however, the volume of data does not allow for breakdown of results any more granular than at the GB-level. The publication does not include the Scottish Government Carer’s Allowance supplement.

DWP will need to vary its approach for the presentation of disability statistics, as administration of some caseloads moves from DWP to the Scottish Government.

2.4. Linking survey and administrative data

With changes introduced by General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in 2018, we can now link all respondents on the basis that the processing is necessary for the department to carry out its functions as a public body (GDPR Article 6(1)(e)).

This opened the opportunity to transform the department’s survey analysis through the integration of administrative data. The first step was to develop a robust data linking approach which delivers a high rate of good quality matches. The approach needs to be repeatable for future implementation into routine processing.

This change, together with improvements in our linking methodology, means that we can now link at least 95% of FRS respondents to their administrative records.

In line with the DWP Digital data strategy, the department is committed to transforming its surveys by linking administrative data from the full range of available sources (for example, from other government departments).

DWP has established an Expert Advisory Group on Survey-based Income Statistics to support its development work. The purpose of the Group is to provide advice to the Chief Statistician on:

• plans to implement the integration of administrative data into the FRS and related outputs

• other technical issues as they arise

Members of the Group include key users of the FRS and related outputs including academic experts, users from third-sector organisations and methodology input from the Office for National Statistics.

A technical report on FRS transformation, with illustrative results for DWP benefits, was published in March 2024. Our development work will be continuing so we plan to follow this up, with further results using HMRC PAYE and Self-Assessment data, and other administrative sources, during 2024 to 2025. Our intention is to include details on how the use of administrative data might affect HBAI low-income estimates.

3. Confirmed changes coming to statistics

The following changes have been announced publicly and are summarised in the following table. Please see the relevant statistics release for more details.

Publication	Details of development	User requirement	Date
Universal Credit	Extending official statistics to include ethnicity statistics	There is interest from Cabinet Office, Ministers, MPs (PQs, FOIs), the media and other users and stakeholders such as the National Audit Office. Publishing ethnicity information as part of regular Official Statistics will enable DWP to meet the Cabinet Office requirements for the ongoing Race Disparity Audit, The Equality Act 2010 and the Public Sector Equality Duty (PSED).	14 May 2024. The development was announced in the latest release of Universal Credit statistics.
Work and Health Programme (WHP)	To include statistics on starts, referrals and individual referrals to WHP Pioneer.	Including the new information will meet a wider range of user needs.	30 May 2024. The development is announced in the February 2024 publication and research strategy.

4. Under development

We are undertaking external user engagement on the following changes. The changes are summarised in the following table, with more detail available in the relevant statistical release.

Publication	Future developments	User requirement
Universal Credit Work Capability Assessment	Proposed developments are included in a release strategy. Phase 3: ● number of UC WCA mandatory reconsiderations registrations and clearances ●outcome of UC WCA mandatory reconsiderations Phase 4: ● number of UC WCA appeals by stage of process and outcome ● UC WCA clearance times	The release of this information also addresses the gap highlighted through Office for Statistics Regulation (OSR) correspondence.
Family Resources Survey 2023 to 2024	Questionnaire changes approved in questionnaire consultation. Four changes on specific topics were approved and implemented in the FRS 2023 to 2024 questionnaire following the annual questionnaire consultation exercise. For more information please see the FRS Release Strategy.	These focus on specific topics to improve the understanding of respondents’ circumstances, improve data quality through better informed data processing decisions, and to collect information to support future policy analysis. These questions are expected to produce useful data that can be delivered to users through additional variables on the FRS 2023 to 2024 dataset immediately after publication in March 2025.
Family Resources Survey 2023 to 2024	Inclusion of Cost-of-Living payments in FRS income-based variables. For more information please see the FRS Release Strategy.	In November 2022 the Government announced additional support to families with several cost-of-living support schemes, from Spring 2023, depending on family circumstances. The FRS will include these payments within the relevant income variables on the FRS dataset. Therefore, any derived variables used within the calculation of benefit unit and household income will include these amounts as appropriate. These variables will then be used in other FRS-based publications for publication in March 2025.
Family Resources Survey 2023 to 2024	Review of material deprivation measures. For more information please see the FRS Release Strategy.	DWP, in partnership with researchers at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), has conducted a review of the material deprivation measures and the associated questions in the FRS. This review aimed to keep the material deprivation measures as relevant as possible, and be consistent with the principles of public value, quality and trustworthiness, as set out in the Code of Practice for Statistics. The first results based on the new questions are expected to be published in HBAI in March 2025.
Fraud and Error in the Benefit System	Include a measurement of Disability Living Allowance (DLA) for the first time since 2004/05	We have been carrying forward the rate of Fraud and Error on DLA since it was last measured in 2004/05. Measurement of the benefit will allow more robust measurement. Users have been informed of the DLA measurement in the publication strategy. Reviews began in January 2023.
Fraud and Error in the Benefit System	The State Pension measurement will include claims administered through the Get Your State Pension (GYSP) online service for the first time in FYE 2024.	State Pension sample currently only includes cases held on the Pension Strategy Computer System (PSCS). Adding GYSP within the sample to allow a more robust measurement. Users have been informed of the addition in the publication strategy.
Fraud and Error in the Benefit System	Review of fraud and error definitions	Methodology change to remove claimant error underpayments from our fraud and error statistics and publish as a separate statistical series. User engagement ran from 1 February 2024 to 29 February 2024. Further information on the user engagement is included in the published statistical notice. Any change in methodology will be confirmed in advance of the May 2024 publication via an updated statistical notice.
Move to Universal Credit	Development of new breakdowns of statistics including: ● household characteristics ● additional geographical breakdowns ● legacy benefit breakdowns and migration notice process ● claims to Universal Credit	The geographical breakdowns are standard breakdowns included in many DWP official statistics and, as the ‘population’ of the move to UC has increased, it is viable to include these additional breakdowns. Further information can be found in the release strategy.
Below Average Resources	Release of official statistics in development on 18 January 2024 and statistical consultation on developing new statistics based on the Social Metrics Commission approach poverty measure.	We are seeking user feedback to inform the development of the statistics and to enhance public value. Find further information in the background and methodology note.
Universal Credit	Undertake a Universal Credit Caseload Methodology review.	The policies, complex source data and methodologies used to create Universal Credit statistics has changed over a ten-year period, resulting in some inherent differences across different Universal Credit statistical series and information sources. Details of development are included in published release strategy.
Child Maintenance Service	Publishing data on Stat-Xplore.	Move from static ODS tables to the flexible dissemination tool. The development was announced in section 11 of the Child Maintenance Service statistics release.
Parliamentary Constituency statistics	From Summer 2024, DWP Official Statistics that provide breakdowns by current Westminster Parliamentary Constituencies data, will also routinely report on new Westminster Parliamentary Constituencies that come into effect from the General Election. These additional breakdowns will be included on the DWP StatXplore platform (the tool through which we disseminate DWP Official Statistics) from Summer 2024, starting with Universal Credit Official Statistics, on a rolling basis as statistics are routinely updated.	Statistics for the new constituencies will be needed before the election, by candidates and voters, and after the election, by MPs and constituents. This approach conforms with the UK Statistics Authority guidance aligns to the approach taken by some Other Government Departments. House of Commons library have also asked that we make available to them new Westminster constituency statistics for their ‘MP constituency dashboards’ including the departments child poverty statistics.
Universal Credit Two Child policy	Include breakdown of figures by parliamentary constituency.	Including new geographical breakdowns will meet a wider range of user needs.

5. New Official Statistics in development

These are user requirements that have been proposed for new statistics. These are not being developed at this time but this section provides an overview of the proposal, the user requirement this would meet and the status.

Proposal	User requirement
Develop new statistics on Jobcentre Plus Midlife MOT.	To ensure equality of access to information on the Jobcentre Plus Midlife MOT and meet user needs.

6. Quality of our statistics

The following publications are experiencing delays or suspensions.

Publication	Details
Benefit sanctions statistics	Jobcentre Plus geographical breakdowns availability. Find more information in the sanctions collection page.
DWP Benefits Statistics	Suspension of State Pension statistics. Suspension of these statistics also impacts the Benefit Combinations statistics for those above State Pension age, which have also been suspended. Suspension is due to issues with internal processing of State Pension data after it was sent for analysis from the Get Your State Pension (GYSP) system. Find more information in DWP benefits statistics.
Family Resources Survey	Issue with the variable EDUCQUAL. This variable is used to present estimates of household food security status and household food bank usage, by educational attainment of head of household. These estimates will not be available on 21 March 2024. Two breakdowns included in tables 9.5 and 9.16 will not be published and the breakdown will be removed from Stat Xplore. Find more information in the release strategy.
Households below average income	Issue with the Family Resources Survey variable EDUCQUAL. This variable is used to present estimates of low income for working age adults split by level of educational attainment. These estimates will not be available on 21 March 2024, affecting the following tables: ● 5_3b_BHC ● 5_3db_AHC ● 5_6db ● 5_9db This breakdown will also be removed from Stat Xplore. Find more information in Households below average income (HBAI) statistics.
Parental conflict Indicator	The Parental conflict Indicator Statistics for 2022 were due to be published in March 2024. A decision has been taken to suspend publication of these statistics pending further investigation. This is because the most recent update has produced some irregular results. We plan to conduct further analysis and review our methodology before publishing.
Universal Credit	Universal Credit Claims and Starts breakdowns by postcode are no longer available from April 2022 onwards due to missing geography data. Find more information in the DWP benefits statistics page.

7. Feedback

We welcome your views on our statistical work programme. We would encourage users to engage directly with the publication teams for any comments on specific developments. For any feedback on our cross-cutting developments and the statistical work programme more generally, please email statistics.hopsupport@dwp.gov.uk.

8. Annex A: Statistical reviews and developments

In addition to our cross-cutting development work on how we deliver statistics, and the changes we are making to our statistical publications, we are also involved in responding to feedback from external reviews and have other statistical development work which forms part of our statistical work programme.

OSR review of income-based poverty statistics

The Office for Statistics Regulation (OSR) published its review of Income-based poverty statistics on 19 May 2021. The report includes 20 recommendations.

A number of recommendations relate to improved guidance in our publications. These are:

• producers should look to provide clearer and more detailed signposting to other income-based poverty statistics in their bulletins
• producers should ensure supporting guidance is accessible to lay users and clear on the appropriate uses and quality of the statistics
• producers should consider the helpfulness of the language used in the poverty bulletins and accompanying guidance, to ensure that it does not risk confusing or misleading less-experienced users
• DWP and ONS should ensure they are clear about the strengths and limitations of household surveys, particularly with regards to missing groups, and clearly set out the implicit and explicit assumptions that underline them
• producers should do more to draw out the necessary insights to allow users to understand the nature of poverty and how this varies between groups at differing levels of poverty, as identified above

We will take these on board in future publications and started from the annual publications in March 2022.

A number of recommendations relate to developments in the use of integrated survey and administrative data. These are:

• the strategic recommendation that innovation is needed for the statistics to deliver their full potential and serve the public good – opportunities for data linkage should be maximised and data gaps should be addressed, building on work already underway in the GSS to explore the use of administrative data and its integration with social surveys
• DWP and ONS, building on existing work to explore the feasibility and potential of social survey and administrative data integration, should explore whether integration can help improve the timeliness and robustness of income-based poverty statistics
• DWP and ONS should prioritise work to address under-reporting at the bottom end of the income distribution – they should consider a multifaceted approach to solving this problem, such as data linkage and making greater use of administrative data

Our existing long-term work programme developing integrated survey-administrative datasets (see section 2.5) will meet the aims of these objectives in the future. We have published a technical report which includes illustrative results to show the combined positive effects of replacing survey responses with administrative records, imputation for unlinked respondents, and revised grossing on FRS estimates. We welcome feedback. Please contact frs.transformation@DWP.GOV.UK. Our development work continues.

From March 2022, some recommendations have been included in the following publications:

• Family Resources Survey
• Households Below Average Income
• Income Dynamics

Family Resources Survey (FRS)

We are proceeding from April 2024 with a fieldwork target of achieving 20,000 households.

9. Annex B: Changes delivered since April 2020

To continue to meet user needs we regularly review our releases to look at the existing content as well as opportunities from new data and new or emerging user requirements.

A list of the changes made to DWP statistics since April 2020 is published separately.

Read the list of changes made since April 2020.

10. Annex C: DWP statistical releases

List of all current publications, frequency of publication and designation (Experimental, Official or National).

Benefit statistics

Publication	Frequency	Designation	Summary
DWP Quarterly Benefit statistics	Quarterly	National	This report is a summary about the main benefits administered by DWP, including: ● Attendance Allowance ● Bereavement Benefit ● Bereavement Support Benefit ● Carer’s Allowance ● Disability Living Allowance ● Employment and Support Allowance ● Incapacity Benefit ● Income Support ● Industrial Injuries Disablement Benefit ● Jobseeker’s Allowance ● Severe Disablement Allowance ● State Pension ● Pension Credit ● Widow’s Benefit
Benefit Combinations	Quarterly	National	The Benefit Combination statistics offer a picture of the number of individuals claiming at least one benefit as well as the number of claimants for each combination of benefits.

Children, Families and Bereavement

Publication	Frequency	Designation	Summary
Child Maintenance Service statistics	Quarterly	Official	Statistics on cases processed under the 2012 statutory child maintenance scheme.
Children in low income families	Annual	Official	Statistics on number and percentage of children living in relative and absolute low income families.
Separated Families Population Statistics	Annual	Official statistics in development	Estimates of the separated families’ population and their child maintenance arrangements. Analysis also shows separated families with no arrangement.

Employment Support Schemes

Publication	Frequency	Designation	Summary
Access to Work Recipients	Annual	Official statistics in development	Statistics on the number of people who had Access to Work provision approved.
Restart Scheme statistics	Bi-annual	Official statistics in development	Statistics on the Restart Scheme.
Work and Health Programme	Quarterly	Official	Statistics on people referred to and starting on the Work and Health Programme.

Health, Disability and Care

Publication	Frequency	Designation	Summary
Employment and Support Allowance (ESA): Outcomes of Work Capability Assessment	Quarterly	National	Work Capability Assessment outcomes for new ESA claims and incapacity benefits claims converted to ESA.
The employment of disabled people	Annual	Official	Detailed analysis and break downs of the number of disabled people in employment.
Personal Independence Payment (PIP)	Quarterly	Official	Includes number of claims in payment, new claim registrations, decisions and awards made.

Housing and Heating

Publication	Frequency	Designation	Summary
Cold Weather Payments	Weekly	Official	Estimated number of Cold Weather Payments and total amounts paid.
Discretionary Housing Payments	Biannual	Official	Statistics on local authorities’ use of Discretionary Housing Payment funds.
Housing Benefit Caseload	Quarterly	National	Number of Housing Benefit claimants.
Housing Benefit (HB) Flows Data	Quarterly	Official	Numbers of HB claims beginning and ending.
Housing Benefit Debt Recoveries	Biannual	National	Data on incorrectly overpaid Housing Benefit (formerly HB recoveries and fraud).
Housing Benefit Speed of processing	Quarterly	Official	Measure of the average time it takes to process a new claim or a change in circumstance of an existing claimant.
Winter Fuel Payment	Annual	Official	Includes recipient and household data, and payments in EEA countries and Switzerland.

Income and Living Standards

Publication	Frequency	Designation	Summary
Family Resources Survey	Annual	National	Facts and figures about the incomes and living circumstances of households and families in the UK.
Households below average income	Annual	National	Number and percentage of people living in low-income households in the UK.
Income dynamics	Annual	Official	Data on changes in incomes in the UK including a measure of the extent to which people experience persistently low income.
Income-related benefits: estimates of take-up	Annual	Official	Estimates of the take-up of the main income-related benefits in Great Britain.
Below Average Resources	Annual	Official Statistics in Development	Statistics in development and a statistical consultation on developing new statistics based on the Social Metrics Commission approach to poverty.

Pensions and Older People

Publication	Frequency	Designation	Summary
Pensioners’ Incomes series	Annual	National	Annual statistics on pensioners’ incomes.
Workplace pension participation and savings trends	Annual	Official	Workplace participation and saving trends, and estimates of the future impacts of automatic enrolment in them.

Spending, Fraud and Error

Publication	Frequency	Designation	Summary
Abstract of DWP Benefit Rate Statistics	Annual	National	Statistics on benefits, National Insurance contributions and indices of prices and earnings in Great Britain.
Benefit Cap	Quarterly	Official (with Official statistics in development on UC)	Statistics on households affected by the benefit cap.
Fraud and Error in the Benefit System	Annual	National	Estimates of fraud and error levels in the benefit system in Great Britain.

Work and Unemployment

Publication	Frequency	Designation	Summary
Benefit Sanctions Statistics	Quarterly	Official statistics in development	Number of sanctions imposed on people who receive Income Support, Jobseeker’s Allowance, Employment and Support Allowance, or Universal Credit.
Economic labour market status of individuals aged 50 and over, trends over time	Annual	Official	Statistics on the economic labour market status of individuals aged 50 and over.
National Insurance Number (NINo) Allocations to adult overseas nationals	Quarterly, and annual for statistics including nationality	National	National Insurance number allocations by nationality at point of NINo registration of DWP benefit recipients.
Universal Credit	Monthly (people) Quarterly (claims, starts & households)	Official	Number of people and households on Universal Credit.
Universal Credit and Child Tax Credit claimants: statistics related to the policy to provide support for a maximum of 2 children	Annual	Official	Statistics related to Child Tax Credit and Universal Credit policy to provide support for a maximum of two children.
Universal Credit Work Capability Assessments	Quarterly	Official statistics in development	Statistics on the number of people on UC WCA by stage of process and monthly decisions and outcomes.
Move to Universal Credit	Quarterly	Official statistics in development	Statistics on the number of people who have been sent managed migration notices inviting them to claim Universal Credit.