Income-related benefits: estimates of take-up: release strategy
Published 26 October 2023
© Crown copyright 2023
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This publication is available at https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/income-related-benefits-estimates-of-take-up-release-strategy/income-related-benefits-estimates-of-take-up-release-strategy
1. Introduction
The income-related benefits: estimates of take-up publication looks at estimates of take-up for income-related benefits.
The pension age benefits covered are:
- Pension Credit (PC)
- Housing Benefit (HB) (for Pensioners)
Take-up refers to the receipt of benefits someone is entitled to, and we estimate take-up in 2 ways:
- by numbers of people who claim these benefits (‘caseload’)
- by the amount these people claim (‘expenditure’)
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 release strategy highlights the potential release of new statistics within the publication and announces any other developments for future publications.
The release strategy is not a static document; it will be updated as plans develop, to provide users with details of latest developments.
The development of these statistics follows the Department for Work and Pension’s statistical work programme.
2. User Engagement
The income-related benefits: estimates of take-up publication team engage with users in the following ways:
- Data and Publication Quality Assurance Groups
- Participated and presented at the Family Finance Survey Users conference in association with the Office for National Statistics (ONS) and UK Data Service (UKDS)
- Provide responses to Parliamentary Questions (PQs) and Freedom of Information (FOI) requests
- Team email irb.takeup@dwp.gov.uk
3. Confirmed changes coming to statistics
Developments for financial year ending 2023
Take-up statistics are based in part, on modelled data from the Family Resources Survey (FRS). As noted in the FRS Release Strategy document, the FRS sample size for financial year ending 2023, we expect to have a final achieved sample in the region of 25,000 households.
Future Developments
Universal Credit (UC) take-up measure
We began development work on a take-up measure for UC but are unable to complete this work during the managed migration of claimants onto UC as part of the UC roll-out programme. Whilst there are still large numbers of people in receipt of legacy benefits & credits, a UC take-up rate would not provide the full picture of what was happening for the entitled working-age population.
To develop a methodology that takes account of both UC and legacy benefits & credits there are several complex conceptual and methodology issues we are having to work through, for example in defining and calculating the estimate of Entitled Non-Recipients and their entitled amounts, as well as developing our understanding of new datasets for this analysis.
This release strategy document will be updated when we start to develop a UC and legacy benefits & credits take-up measure.
4. Feedback
We welcome feedback
If you have any comments or questions, please contact:
Joanne Burrage
Email: irb.takeup@dwp.gov.uk
ISBN 978-1-78659-541-6
Note, our statistical practice is regulated by the Office for Statistics Regulation (OSR).