Income-related benefits: estimates of take-up: release strategy
Updated 10 October 2024
© Crown copyright 2024
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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 Pensions statistical work programme.
Our statistical practice is regulated by the Office for Statistics Regulation (OSR).
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
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 were still large numbers of people in receipt of legacy benefits and credits in financial year ending (FYE) 2023, 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 and 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.
As stated in the Department for Work and Pensions statistical work programme, this measure to assess UC and income related legacy benefit take-up for the working-age population is currently under development.
4. Feedback
We welcome feedback
If you have any comments or questions, please contact:
Kate Martin, email: irb.takeup@dwp.gov.uk
ISBN 978-1-78659-705-2