Official Statistics

Benefit sanctions statistics to May 2023 (experimental)

Published 15 August 2023

Applies to England, Scotland and Wales

The latest release of these statistics can be found in the collection of benefit sanctions statistics.

This is a release of statistics on benefit sanctions and includes data up to May 2023.

The statistics in this publication are for Great Britain (England, Wales and Scotland only – excluding Northern Ireland).

The next statistics release will be 14 November 2023.

We are seeking user feedback on this statistical bulletin. Send comments to: epass.team@dwp.gov.uk

There should be no comparisons made across benefits.

The data sources used to produce these statistics are very different and while we have attempted to use a consistent methodology, there are differences in methodological approaches between benefits. Additionally, the benefits themselves are very different and require interpretation based on the rules of the specific benefit.

The sanctions process means that the outcome of a sanction is subject to retrospective changes which should be considered when using the decision data.

The statistics within the publication are labelled as experimental statistics. Experimental statistics are a subset of newly developed or innovative statistics undergoing evaluation.

This publication contains data on Universal Credit (UC) live service (UCLS) and full service (UCFS).

1. Main stories

The statistics show:

• in May 2023, 6.29% of UC claimants subject to sanction as part of their conditionality regime, at the point where a sanction was applied, had a deduction taken from their UC award as a result of a sanction

• in May 2023, 31.4% of UC claimants were in the conditionality regimes where sanctions can be applied

• the UC sanction rate is up by 0.12 percentage points from February 2023 and is up by 0.39 percentage points in the latest 12 months

• the UC sanction rate reached a peak of 6.84% in October 2022 for the timeseries from April 2019 to May 2023

• October 2022 has the lowest percentage of claimants in conditionality regimes where sanctions can be applied (31.2%) when compared to the timeseries from April 2019 to May 2023

• in April 2023, the number of UCFS adverse sanction decisions was 37,000. Adverse sanction decisions on UC full service reached a peak of 59,000 in March 2022, when comparing the timeseries from April 2019 to April 2023

For further information regarding how this is calculated, see the “Sanction Rates” section of the background information and methodology document.

2. What you need to know

The data in this publication is the latest available for statistics on sanctions for UC. Statistics are available from:

• August 2015 to July 2020 for UC live service sanction decisions

• May 2016 to April 2023 for UC full service adverse sanction decisions

• April 2019 to May 2023 for UC full service rate

Users can also:

• produce their own tables and access demographic breakdowns using Stat-Xplore

• access the supporting data tables that accompany each release of statistics

Claimants are required to meet agreed conditions to be eligible for Universal Credit. If a claimant does not meet one or more conditions of their benefit claim without good reason, their benefit could be stopped or reduced. This is a benefit sanction. However, not everyone that is initially referred for failing to meet the conditions of their claim will receive a sanction. Where a claimant’s benefit is reduced, the claimant may be eligible for a hardship payment.

The sanction rate is calculated as the proportion of people on each benefit at a point in time (meaning on the same day that the claimant count is recorded) with a deduction from their benefit due to a sanction. This is different to the data on sanction decisions, which uses the total number of decisions across a whole month. Further information on definitions is provided in the “About these statistics” section and within the background and methodology documents.

Statistics covered in this bulletin include data for sanction decisions during the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. Due to legislative changes to disapply work-search and work availability requirements between 30 March 2020 and 30 June 2020 (in response to the pandemic), comparisons during the COVID-19 pandemic should not be made to other times.

At the beginning of the pandemic, conditionality was paused for UC claimants and face to face appointments were suspended, to enable the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) to focus on processing the unprecedented volume of new claims. While DWP reintroduced conditionality in July 2020, face to face appointments were gradually reintroduced from April 2021 for all claimants. As the return to face to face appointments was a gradual process and claimants were only subject to sanction when they failed to meet a mandatory requirement, there is a delay between the start of the return to face to face appointments in April 2021 and the increase in the UC sanction rate in June 2021.

Conditionality was reintroduced from 1 July 2020 on a phased approach and as capacity allowed.

Further information about the sanctions process and source of these statistics can be found in the background information and guidance documents.

3. Sanction rates and conditionality

Statistics covered in this bulletin include data for sanction decisions during the COVID-19 pandemic. For more information, see the notes in the “What you need to know” section of this bulletin.

Updates on suspension of measures

UC live service data has been temporarily suspended from this section, and statistics have been provided from April 2019 for full service only. For further information, see the updates on suspension of measures.

3.1 Benefit sanction rates

The sanction rate is calculated as the proportion of people on each benefit at a point in time (meaning on the same day that the claimant count is recorded) with a deduction from their benefit due to a sanction. This is different to the data on sanction decisions, which uses the total number of decisions across a whole month.

The UC sanction rate in May 2023 was 6.29%, down from the peak in the available timeseries of 6.84% in October 2022

UC full service claimants with a sanction deduction, as a proportion of UC full service claimants in conditionality regimes where sanctions can be applied, at a point in time, April 2019 to May 2023

Source: Benefit Sanction statistics data tables

The number of claimants in conditionality regimes is counted at a specific point in time, the second Thursday of the month. As such it is possible for a claimant to be in a conditionality regime where sanctions can be applied and receive a sanction, before moving to a conditionality regime where sanctions cannot be applied before the count date. The sanction would appear in the numerator for the rate calculation, while the claimant would not appear in the denominator.

In the latest month (May 2023), the sanction rate was 6.29%, this is up by 0.12 percentage points from February 2023 and is up by 0.39 percentage points in the latest 12 months. The UCFS sanction rate reached a peak of 6.84% in October 2022 for the timeseries from April 2019 to May 2023. From this October 2022 peak the rate has shown a small decline.

The monthly rate of UC claimants with a sanction deduction remained largely stable from April 2019 until March 2020. Prior to legislation changes made on 30 March 2020, 2.51% of UC full service claimants subject to conditionality at the point where the sanction was applied had a deduction taken from their UC full service award as a result of a sanction. At this time there was a sharp downwards trend, which coincided with an increase to the UC caseload during the COVID-19 pandemic. The sanction rate remained low until June 2021, when it began to rise following the return to face-to-face appointments in April 2021. The sanction rate then climbed to the peak of 6.84% in October 2022.

3.2 Conditionality

The number of claimants in conditionality regimes where sanctions can be applied has decreased overall since March 2021 but is still higher than in April 2019 to March 2020

UCFS claimants in conditionality regimes where sanctions can be applied, at a point in time, April 2019 to May 2023

Source: Benefit Sanction statistics data tables

In May 2023, 1.86 million UC claimants were in the conditionality regimes where sanctions can be applied. The number of UCFS claimants in conditionality regimes where sanctions can be applied increased sharply from March 2020 (1.35 million) to May 2020 (2.65 million). In March 2021 (2.72 million), the number of UCFS claimants in conditionality regimes where sanctions can be applied was over double that of March 2020. From March 2021 the number of UCFS claimants in conditionality regimes subject to sanction decreased to 2.01 million in January 2022 before increasing to 2.02 million in February 2022. The number of UCFS claimants in conditionality regimes where sanctions can be applied then generally decreased to 1.79 million in October 2022, before rising to 1.92 million in April 2023 then falling to 1.86 million in May 2023. Overall, in recent months the number of UCFS claimants in conditionality regimes subject to sanction levelled off between June 2022 and January 2023 before rising slightly in recent months.

The percentage of claimants in conditionality regimes where sanctions can be applied was highest in April 2019 and has fallen overall since May 2020, before levelling out in recent months

Percentage of UCFS claimants in conditionality regimes where sanctions can be applied, at a point in time, April 2019 to May 2023

Source: Benefit Sanction statistics data tables

Over the course of the roll-out of UC, the balance of individuals subject to sanction as a proportion of the caseload has changed. In May 2023, 31.4% of UC claimants were in conditionality regimes where sanctions can be applied (this includes claimants in the “searching for work”, “planning for work”, “preparing for work” or “unknown” conditionality regimes), compared to 44.7% in March 2020, just prior to changes made to work requirements as a result of COVID-19. From here, the percentage of claimants in conditionality regimes where sanctions can be applied temporarily increased to 50.0% in April 2020 and 50.4% in May 2020, coinciding with an increase to the UC caseload during the COVID-19 pandemic. The percentage of claimants in conditionality regimes where sanctions can be applied then gradually decreased to 43.5% in January 2021 and then increased to 45.6% in March 2021. From here an overall gradual decline is observed, with the trend levelling off from June 2022 (32.8%). October 2022 has the lowest percentage of claimants in conditionality regimes where sanctions can be applied when compared to the timeseries from the 11 months preceding the COVID-19 pandemic. October 2022 also has the highest rate of claimants who were being sanctioned, at 6.84%.

4. Sanction decisions and reasons

Statistics covered in this bulletin include data for sanction decisions during the COVID-19 pandemic. For more information, see the notes in the “What you need to know” section of this bulletin.

Claimants will continue to migrate from Legacy Jobseeker’s Allowance (JSA) and Employment and Support Allowance (ESA) onto UC full service or New Style JSA and ESA until legacy benefits have ceased. As of April 2019, 100% of UC live service claimants transferred onto full service.

Data for numbers of original adverse sanction decisions has been included from May 2016, for UC full service. This is because prior to this time, UC full service was only being implemented as a trial in a small area of the UK only (Sutton, Southwark, Croydon, Hounslow and Musselburgh). More information about this is available in our UC background information and methodology document.

It should be noted that references to full service adverse sanction decisions describe original, adverse sanction decisions only. We are currently unable to provide statistics on original non-adverse, reserved or cancelled sanction decisions, as this information is not captured on the administrative system.

4.1 UC full service: Adverse sanction decisions and reasons

The number of adverse sanction decisions has shown an overall decrease from the March 2022 peak, with notable dips in December 2022 and April 2023

UC full service adverse sanction decisions by month, May 2016 to April 2023

Source: Benefit Sanction statistics data tables

In April 2023 there were 37,000 original adverse sanction decisions made for UCFS. The numbers of adverse sanction decisions reached a pre-pandemic peak in July 2019 (23,000) after following an upward trend as UC full service was rolled out and the UC caseload built up. In March 2020 the number of adverse sanction decisions decreased to 11,000. The number of adverse sanction decisions continued to drop following the legislative changes to work requirements on 30 March 2020 (in response to the COVID-19 pandemic), reaching 0 adverse sanction decisions in July 2020.

In August 2020, the number of UC full service adverse sanction decisions began to gradually increase until May 2021, where they reached 1,700. Face to face appointments were reintroduced from April 2021. From June 2021, a much larger increase was observed, continuing until November 2021, where they reached 38,000. Adverse sanction decisions then decreased to 32,000 in December 2021, before continually increasing to 59,000 in March 2022. This is the highest number of adverse sanction decisions on UC full service across the whole timeseries, and 2.5 times the size it was at its previous pre-pandemic peak in July 2019 (23,000). By April 2023 adverse sanction decisions decreased to 37,000.

Summary of original UCFS adverse sanction decision reasons from May 2022 to April 2023

Original adverse sanction decisions made by reason group	Latest Year	Latest Year (%)	Latest Quarter	Latest Quarter (%)
Failure to Attend or Participate in a Mandatory Interview	505,510	97.2	121,630	96.1
Availability for Work	5,400	1.0	1,890	1.5
Employment Programmes	5,480	1.1	1,850	1.5
Reasons for Leaving Previous Employment	2,840	0.5	1,010	0.8
Other	630	0.1	180	0.1
Total	519,860	100.0	126,560	100.0

Notes:

1. Note that these are original, adverse sanction decisions, not all decisions as with other benefits.

2. Disclosure control has been applied to this data for confidentiality purposes. Due to this, totals may not be the sum of the individual data breakdown.

3. For a full breakdown of the adverse sanction decision reasons, see the methodology document.

4. Please note that in previously published statistics, mandatory interviews were referred to as Work-Focused Interviews.

Failure to attend or participate in a mandatory interview accounted for 97.2% of all adverse sanction decisions in the last year. Employment Programmes was the next most common adverse sanction reason, accounting for 1.1% of adverse sanction decisions in the last year.

4.2 UC live service: Sanction decisions and reasons

Please note that all sanction statistics for UC live service are frozen, with no updates published past the November 2020 release of this bulletin. The frozen UC live service statistics are still available in this publication to enable consideration of the full timeseries for UC sanction statistics.

The volume of decisions processed fell to 0 because UC live service has closed to new claims, and the entire caseload has migrated to UC full service

UC live service sanction decisions by month, August 2015 to July 2020

Notes:

1. Data from 1 April 2019 includes mandatory reconsiderations and appeals only.

2. UC live service sanction statistics are now frozen, the final update was published in the version of this bulletin released on 10 November 2020.

Source: Sanction Decisions Stat-Xplore tables

The total number of monthly decisions varied from August 2015, with peaks in December 2016 (50,000) and October 2017 (46,000), falling to 0 in April 2020, where it remained.

Adverse sanction decisions make up the majority of outcomes for both original decisions and mandatory reconsiderations

Summary of UC live service decision outcomes at each stage, August 2015 to July 2020

Notes:

1. UC live service sanction statistics are now frozen, the final update was published in the version of this bulletin released on 10 November 2020.

2. Percentages presented for one or more categories on this graph may not total 100% because data is not included for reserved and cancelled decisions.

Source: Sanction Decisions Stat-Xplore tables

53.1% of original decisions resulted in a sanction being applied and 69.1% of mandatory reconsiderations resulted in a sanction being upheld from August 2015 to July 2020.

Summary of UC live service decision reasons from August 2019 to July 2020 (Frozen Data)

All decisions made by reason group	Latest year for which data is available (August 2019 to July 2020)	Latest year for which data is available (%) (August 2019 to July 2020)	Latest quarter for which data is available (May 2020 to July 2020)
Failure to Attend or Participate in a Mandatory Interview	30	53.3	0
Availability for Work	10	18.3	0
Employment Programmes	10	20.0	0
Reason for Leaving Previous Employment	0	0.0	0
Other	0	0.0	0
Total	60	100.0	0

Notes:

1. Disclosure control has been applied to this data for confidentiality purposes. Due to this, totals may not be the sum of the individual data breakdowns.

2. 100% of UC live service claimants were transferred onto UC full service by April 2019. There are no original decisions on UC live service past this point, hence any changes beyond this point refer to mandatory reconsiderations and appeals only.

3. Proportions are not given for the latest quarter, where the overall number of sanction decisions is low. This is because the disclosure control applied to the data could cause a misleading representation when calculating percentages.

4. For a full breakdown of the adverse sanction decision reasons see the methodology document.

5. UC live service sanction statistics are frozen, the final update was published in the version of this bulletin released on 10 November 2020.

6. Please note that in previously published statistics, mandatory interviews were referred to as Work-Focused Interviews. Failure to attend or participate in a mandatory interview is still listed as Work-Focused Interviews on Stat-Xplore.

Failure to attend or participate in a mandatory interview accounted for 53.3% of all UC live service sanction decisions from August 2019 to July 2020.

5. Benefit sanction durations

UC durations data has been temporarily suspended from this bulletin. For further information, see the updates on suspension of measures.

6. Sanction destinations

6.1 UC live service: Destinations of claimants receiving a benefit sanction

The majority of sanctioned UC live service claimants spent more than 5 months after the end of a sanction in receipt of working age benefits

Distribution of the number of months spent by UC claimants earning or on working age benefits in the 180 days (6 months) following a sanction decision from 1 August 2015 to 28 February 2019

Notes:

1. There were no original adverse sanction decisions made on UC live service after 31 March 2019.

2. UC live service sanction statistics are frozen. The final update was published in the version of this bulletin released on 10 November 2020.

Source: Benefit Sanction statistics data tables

After receiving a UC live service sanction decision, claimants spent an average (mean) of 153 days out of the following 180 days in receipt of benefit (UC, JSA, ESA (Work Related Activity Group (WRAG)) or Income Support (IS)). On average (mean), only 2 of the 180 days were spent on a benefit that was not UC.

In the 180 days following a UC live service sanction decision, 4.9% of claimants were not in receipt of any of the tracked benefits (UC, JSA, ESA (WRAG) or IS). 76.2% of claimants spent over 150 days (5 months) in receipt of benefit and 70.3% of claimants spent the full 180 days in receipt of benefit.

After receiving a benefit sanction decision, UC live service claimants spent an average (mean) of 51 days out of the following 180 days earning, with 9.0% of claimants earning for the full 180 days after they had been sanctioned. See the methodology document for further information on how earnings are calculated.

7. About these statistics

Figures in this bulletin are rounded in accordance with the DWP rounding policy for statistics, details of which can be found in the “Rounding” section of the background information and methodology document. Unrounded figures from the underlying data available on Stat-Xplore or in accompanying tables may not sum exactly to the rounded totals accordingly.

Interpretation of data and the sanction process

Care must be taken when interpreting the duration charts and figures as, for fair comparisons, sufficient time must have passed before longer duration categories can be achieved. Deductions can end for a number of reasons, such as the claimant leaves benefit, transfers to a different conditionality regime, or the claimant is earning enough on UC that they no longer have any standard allowance from which a deduction can be taken. These statistics include those sanctions which subsequently go on to be overturned. Claimants whose sanction is overturned will be repaid any deduction. When a claimant leaves benefit following a sanction start, but before the sanction is served, the claim end date is taken to be the sanction end date. In the cases where a sanction end date is the same date as the sanction start (the claimant serves zero days of sanction), the cases are not counted as a sanction served and are excluded from the data.

Other National and Official Statistics

Read about other National and Official Statistics produced by DWP.

Users can also find further information about the sanctions process, source of these statistics and the publication rounding policy in the background information and methodology documents.

Changes, revisions and known issues

The following information is about changes, revisions and known issues with the statistics.

Statistics covered in this bulletin include data for sanction decisions during the COVID-19 pandemic. Although legislative changes to disapply work-search and work availability requirements were effective between 30 March 2020 and 30 June 2020 (in response to the pandemic), some sanction decisions for these types of failures could have been made during this time period. This is because decisions are often made and processed after the date that the claimant failure occurred. This means that it was possible for sanction decisions to be recorded after legislation changes came into effect, in instances where a claimant prior to 30 March 2020 has failed to meet the work requirements set out in their claimant commitment. Additionally, sanction decisions were also possible for some failures which occurred after this date, for example, for leaving a job voluntarily without good reason or for misconduct.

Conditionality was reintroduced from 1 July 2020 on a phased approach and as capacity allowed.

This impacts data for UC and JSA sanctions.

Suspension of UC sanction durations and median statistics

While carrying out a detailed investigation of the sanctions data to improve the methodology, it was identified that the complex code used to process the data for UC sanction durations statistics was not performing as expected. This was complicated further by the combination and substantially different methods of processing data from the separate UC full service and UC live service systems. The measures affected are the sanction duration and median sanction length. While we consulted with data engineers and architects to understand the complex data, and conducted further in-depth investigations into the code, both of these series were suspended for UC live service and UC full service as of the November 2020 release.

Investigations are complete and methodological improvements have been made to the code. To ensure that these are robust, we are currently undertaking extensive Quality Assurance activities. Following successful completion of these we will reinstate the new measures in the subsequent set of published statistics. We will continue to provide updates on progress through the quarterly bulletins and the DWP Statistical Work Programme.

Figures for UC full service adverse sanction decisions, UC live service decisions and destinations (now frozen), and all legacy benefit measures (no longer reported on) are unaffected by this.

Partial suspension of UC sanction rate statistics

Investigations into the UC full service rate code and methodology have highlighted that the methodology currently used to calculate the UC rate differs from that described in versions of the release published before November 2020, with open sanctions already being included in the measure for UC full service. Investigations to establish if this is also the case for UC live service are complete and methodological improvements have been made to the code. To ensure that these are robust, we are currently undertaking extensive Quality Assurance activities. Following successful completion of these we will reinstate the new measures in the subsequent set of published statistics. We will continue to provide updates on progress through the quarterly bulletins and the DWP Statistical Work Programme.

Figures for UC full service adverse sanction decisions, UC live service decisions and destinations (now frozen), and all legacy benefit measures (no longer reported on) are unaffected by this.

Definitions

UC full service

Full service is the digital system that administers Universal Credit for the full range of claimant groups. It was gradually introduced to Jobcentres from 2016 and was available in every Jobcentre (including Northern Ireland) by December 2018. It is worth noting that whilst UC full service is available in Northern Ireland, these statistics exclude these cases.

At present, we only hold data on original, adverse sanction decisions for claimants on UC full service and cannot differentiate between non-adverse, reserved and cancelled outcomes. Prior to May 2016, UC full service was being implemented as a trial in a small area of the UK only (Sutton, Southwark, Croydon, Hounslow and Musselburgh) so data on original, adverse sanction decisions is included from May 2016 onwards.

UC live service

The original service administrating Universal Credit. It was gradually introduced to Jobcentres from 2013 and was available in every Jobcentre (excluding Northern Ireland) by May 2016. All claimants were moved to full service by April 2019.

New claims to UC live service ceased in January 2018, and since then the remaining live service cases have been gradually migrated to UC full service. This has resulted in a gradual decrease in the number of live service sanction decisions. By 1 April 2019, the systems that were used to administer live service cases were shut down. Due to this, data for any original UC live service sanction decisions has been frozen from this point.

Sanction decisions

A claimant can be subject to sanction when they do not meet a condition of their benefit. The Decision Maker looks at the available information about the claimant and their referral and decides on an outcome. The decision made can be:

• Adverse – they decide to sanction the claimant

• Non-Adverse – they decide not to sanction the claimant

• Cancelled – they decide that the referral was not appropriate and cancel it

• Reserved (UC live service only) – a decision to sanction the claimant cannot be made, since the claimant is not currently on benefit, so the sanction cannot be applied. The claimant will be re-referred to a Decision Maker if they begin to claim benefit again

Within this publication, we refer to all of these outcomes as decisions. Many sanction decisions can be made during the course of a claim where the claimant has failed to meet the conditions of their benefit claim more than once.

Sanction stages

Each UC live service decision can have a maximum of 4 stages, beginning with the Original Decision made by a Decision Maker. If the claimant does not agree that their benefit should be reduced, they may request a Decision Review, Mandatory Reconsideration, and Appeal. UC full service has a maximum of 3 stages as there is no Decision Review.

In the statistics, only the latest decision is kept, meaning that any previous decisions for each sanction referral are updated with every publication.

Sanction durations

We count the length of time that each claimant is receiving less benefit because they were being sanctioned and calculate the median duration of all sanctioned claimants.

The median is the middle number when all of the sanction lengths have been arranged from smallest to largest. Durations are counted up to and including the last month in which a deduction is taken. If a claimant has multiple sanctions which are served without a break in deductions, this will be counted as one sanction in the statistics. The underlying figures can be found in the supporting tables that accompany each release of statistics.

Sanction rate

For UC, the rate is calculated by dividing the number of claimants with a sanction deduction by the number of UC claimants who are in conditionality regimes where sanctions can be applied, at a point in time. The conditionality regimes where sanctions can be applied are:

• ‘searching for work’
• ‘planning for work’
• ‘preparing for work’
• ‘unknown’

These figures are calculated differently to the decisions figures, which are based on the number of decisions made in a full month. The underlying figures can be found in the supporting tables that accompany each release of statistics.

Destinations

We track what happens to claimants after they receive an original, adverse sanction decision. The figures show the amount of time spent on different working age benefits (UC, JSA, ESA (WRAG) and IS) in the 180-day period following the decision. In addition, we have developed statistics to show who has had a period of earnings after their sanction. Further information can be found in the destinations methodology document.

Contact information and feedback

Authors: Harry Phasey, Craig Mejury, Sophie Martin and Temi Olubajo

Lead Statistician: Tracy Hills

For more information on sanction statistics, contact the Employment Programmes and Sanction Statistics team at epass.team@dwp.gov.uk.

DWP would like to hear your views on our statistical publications. If you use any of these statistics publications, we would be interested in hearing what you use them for and how well they meet your requirements. Please email DWP at epass.team@dwp.gov.uk.

Users can also join the “Welfare and Benefit Statistics” community at StatsUserNet. DWP announces items of interest to users via this forum, as well as replying to users’ questions.

ISBN: 978-1-78659-477-8