Guidance

Universal Credit sanctions statistics: background information and methodology

Information about sanctions statistics and methodology including the purpose, source, definitions and limitations of the statistics covered.

Documents

Details

The benefit sanctions statistics show the number of decisions made to apply a sanction to those on Universal Credit and the outcomes of the sanction process.

Published 17 May 2017
Last updated 13 February 2024 + show all updates
  1. Changes have been made to the About the statistics, Appeals, and Live Service sections of the background information and methodology document. The latest release of sanctions statistics has been published today (13 February 2024).

  2. The document has been updated to show that the sanctions statistics are now classed as 'official statistics in development'. The latest release of sanctions statistics has been published today (14 November 2023).

  3. Published a revised version of the 'Universal Credit sanctions statistics: background information and methodology'. New information about benefit sanction decisions during the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic has been added to the 'About the statistics' section, and the 'Feedback' section has been updated.

  4. Added information about the rounding of data in some sanction statistics tables, The latest release of sanctions statistics has been published today, 23 February 2020.

  5. Revised background information and methodology - updated to support the latest release of sanctions statistics, also published today (10 November 2020).

  6. Revised to support the latest release of benefit sanctions statistics, also published today (11 August 2020). Information added to the limitations of the statistics section - about how sanction decisions are recorded for Universal Credit full service.

  7. Revised information about the Universal Credit full service sanction decisions statistics.

  8. Revised to support the latest release of benefit sanctions statistics, also published today (18 February 2020).

  9. Published revised version, now dated November 2019. This has been updated to support today's release of sanctions statistics (these have data to July 2019).

  10. Published revised version, now dated August 2019. This has been updated to support the latest release of sanctions statistics (these have data to April 2019).

  11. Published revised version, now dated May 2019. This has been updated to support the latest release of sanctions statistics (these have data to January 2019).

  12. Published a revised version (May 2018) of the background information and methodology. Updated the table on page 5 of the document to make sure all the terms used are consistent.

  13. Published a revised version of 'Universal Credit sanctions statistics: background information and methodology'. The new version is dated February 2018 and has been updated to support the latest release of sanctions statistics.

  14. Clarified the paragraph at the end of page 4 about how sanctions reduce Universal Credit.

  15. Published a revised version of 'Universal Credit sanctions statistics: background information and methodology'. The new version is dated November 2017 and has been updated to support the latest release of sanctions statistics.

  16. Published a revised version of the background information and methodology - dated August 2017.

  17. First published.