National statistics

Child and Working Tax Credits Finalised Annual Awards 2020 to 2021 Quality Report

Updated 22 November 2022

Contact

• Organisation unit: Knowledge, Analysis and Intelligence (KAI)

• Name: A Chumber

• Function: Analyst, Benefits and Cross Government Analysis

• Mail address:

KAI Benefits and Cross Government Analysis
HM Revenue and Customs
100 Parliament Street
London
SW1A 2BQ

• Email: benefitsandcredits.analysis@hmrc.gov.uk

Introduction

These statistics focus on the average number of families benefiting from Child Tax Credit (CTC) and/or Working Tax Credit (WTC) and the average entitlement of these families in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland in the tax year 2020 to 2021. This publication presents a breakdown of families by their profile position, age and gender, type of family and family size as well as the number of children in benefiting families. It also includes statistics on families benefiting from each of the different elements of tax credits and provides information on the income used in calculating awards.

Tax credits were introduced in April 2003 replacing Working Families’ Tax Credit, Disabled Person’s Tax Credit and Children’s Tax Credit. They are an important part of the government’s policy aims to provide adequate financial incentives to work, reduce child poverty and to increase financial support for all families.

Working Tax Credits (WTC) provide in-work support for people on low incomes, with or without children. It is available for in-work support to people who are aged at least 16 and meet a certain criteria.

Child Tax Credits provide income-related support for children and qualifying young people aged 16-19 who are in full time, non-advanced education or approved training into a single tax credit, payable to the main carer. Families can claim CTC whether or not the adults are in work.

More information about tax credits eligibility can be found on GOV.UK.

Statistical presentation

The Finalised Awards Statistics consists of a series of tables and graphs showing the latest data on Tax Credits. The aggregate statistics on tax credit support is broken down into various subcategories: family composition, family income, work status, age and gender and geographical analyses. The statistics also show breakdowns of families benefiting from each of the different elements of tax credits and provides information on the income used in calculating awards.

Statistical processing

Source data

The main source data used to create the Child and Working Tax Credits finalised annual awards statistical publication is scan1190 from the HM Revenue and Customs tax credits administration system.

Data collection

Scan1190 holds information on the number of Child and Working Tax Credits claimants and such as of claimants’ annual income and annual entitlement. The scan also provides a detailed breakdown of individual tax credit elements that claimants were entitled to during the 2020 to 2021 tax year.

Data Validation

Checks carried out on the data include:

• analysts check that the number of records loaded into the analysis database is as expected
• analysts check that the number of records as we go through the code is as expected for different files created (these are compared to previous years publications)
• any large changes in the number of claimants from one statistical release to the next are investigated

Quality Management

Quality Assurance

All official statistics produced by KAI, must meet the standards in the Code of Practice for Statistics produced by the UK Statistics Authority and all analysts adhere to best practice as set out in the ‘Quality’ pillar.

Analytical Quality Assurance describes the arrangements and procedures put in place to ensure analytical outputs are error free and fit-for-purpose. It is an essential part of KAI’s way of working as the complexity of our work and the speed at which we are asked to provide advice means there is a high risk of error which can have serious consequences on KAI’s and HMRC’s reputation, decisions, and in turn on peoples’ lives.

Every piece of analysis is unique, and as a result there is no single quality assurance (QA) checklist that contains all the QA tasks needed for every project. Nonetheless, analysts in KAI use a checklist that summarises the key QA tasks, and is used as a starting point for teams when they are considering what QA actions to undertake.

Teams amend and adapt it as they see fit, to take account of the level of risk associated with their analysis, and the different QA tasks that are relevant to the work.

At the start of a project, during the planning stage, analysts and managers make a risk-based decision on what level of QA is required.

Analysts and managers construct a plan for all the QA tasks that will need to be completed, along with documentation on how each of those tasks are to be carried out and turn this list into a QA checklist specific to the project.

Analysts carry out the QA tasks, update the checklist, and pass onto the Senior Responsible Officer for review and eventual sign off.

Quality assessment

The QA for this project adhered to the framework described in ‘4.1 Quality assurance’ and the specific procedures undertaken were as follows:

Stage 1: Specifying the question

• Previous documentation was reviewed and outputs were agreed with the relevant stakeholders.

Stage 2: Developing a methodology

• The methodology used for the previous year’s analysis was reviewed and was agreed with my team to be appropriate for producing these statistics.

Stage 3: Building and populating a model/piece of code

• Most of the analysis in this publication was carried out using SAS, Excel, and R Studio (to produce the charts) and are in line with good practice guidance. Reproducible Analytical Pipelines (RAPs) will be utilised for future publications of the provisional award statistics.

• Data inputs were checked to ensure they were fit-for-purpose by reviewing available documentation and, where possible, through direct contact with data suppliers.

• QA of the input data was carried out.
• The analysis was audited by someone other than the lead analyst – checking code and methodology.

Stage 4: Running and testing the model/code

• Results were compared with those produced in previous years and differences understood and determined to be genuine.
• Results were determined to be explainable and in line with expectations.

Stage 5: Drafting the final outputs

• Checks were completed to ensure internal consistency (e.g., totals equal the sum of the components).
• The final outputs were independently proofread and checked.

Relevance

The finalised awards are currently published in July or August the year after the relevant tax year. This time lag is due to the time delay between the end of the tax year and the time at which people have to declare their income from 2020/21. These are National Statistics, and the month of publication is indicated on HMRC’s release schedule with the exact date being published at least 28 days before its release on HMRC’s statistics release calendar.

The statistics contained in this publication will be of interest for anyone that is looking for the most comprehensive data on Tax Credits and detailed geographical estimates of the average number of families benefiting from Child Tax Credit (CTC) and/or Working Tax Credit (WTC) and the average entitlement of these families in England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland in the tax year 2020 to 2021.

Accuracy and reliability

The published tables are based on the 2020 to 2021 finalised awards data, which in turn is based on 100% of tax credit administrative data available for that period, and therefore are not subject to sampling error.

This publication has been produced in line with UK Statistics Authority’s Code of Practice for producing official statistics and have also been independently checked by a step-by-step quality assurance process.

Revision policy

This policy has been developed in accordance with the UK Statistics Authority Code of Practice for Official Statistics and HMRC’s Revisions Policy. The HMRC official statistics policies can be found on GOV.UK.

There are two types of revisions:

Scheduled revisions

Regular, scheduled revisions due to the receipt of updated information since the previous statistical publication.

Unscheduled revisions

HMRC aims to avoid the need for unscheduled revisions to publications unless they are absolutely necessary and put systems and processes in place to minimise the number of revisions. Where revisions are necessary due to errors in the statistical process, an explanation along with the nature and extent of revision is also provided. The statistical release and the accompanying tables will be updated and published as soon as is practical.

Timeliness and punctuality

The Child and Working Tax Credits Statistics finalised annual awards was first published in 2003 and is produced with enough time to produce the analysis, carry out quality assurance and prepare the right format for publication. The release has since been published each year on the pre-announced date

Accessibility and clarity

HMRC has an increased focus on accessibility and all documents published for this release have met the Department’s accessibility requirements.

Finalised annual award tax credits statistics are free and accessible to users via the Research and Statistics page on GOV.UK.

Recent finalised annual award tax credits statistics are found in the Personal tax credits statistics page on GOV.UK.

Published statistics from previous years are available on the National Archives website and can be accessed using the following links:

• Personal tax credits statistics (published July 2013 onwards)

• Personal tax credits statistics (published before July 2013)

Publications are available in PDF and Excel formats and can easily be downloaded by users. The latest statistics publication is available in HTML and Open Document Spreadsheet (ODS) formats in compliance with the new accessibility requirements.

Coherence and comparability

It is difficult to fully compare this publication with any previous releases due to the numerous policy changes affecting CWTC over the past ten years. Changes in geographical boundaries and area codes have also had an impact on time series analysis.

Since the most recent 2019/20 finalised annual awards publication, the following local authorities have been abolished:

• Corby District Council
• Daventry District Council
• East Northants District Council
• Kettering Borough Council
• South Northants District Council
• The Borough Council of Wellingborough
• Northamptonshire County Council

These have been replaced by 2 unitary councils:

• North Northamptonshire
• West Northamptonshire

Trade-offs between output quality components

We are committed to ensuring these statistics are as accurate as possible and to minimise revisions due to errors, as such, the data will be published in a timely manner taking into account the time needed to carry out full and robust quality assurance.

Assessment of user needs and perceptions

Users can provide feedback by using the contact details provided in the publication.

HMRC launched a wide-ranging consultation on a range of statistics on 8 February 2021.

Performance, cost and respondent burden

Most of the datasets used for this analysis are taken from the tax credits administrative data and therefore the cost of carrying out this analysis is minimal. The compilation of these statistics does not impose any additional burden on employees or employers.

Confidentiality, transparency and security

All datasets used for these statistics are stored in a Controlled Access Folders (CAFs) which are accessible to only a few analysts who are part of the production team and therefore have business need to access the data.

HMRC is committed is to the efficient management of information as such our records are compliant with:

• UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR) 2018
• The Data Protection Act 2018
• The Data Protection Act 1998
• The Public Records Act 1968
• The Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOI) (in particular the Code of Practice on Records Management issued under s46 FOI which requires that public authorities have effective record-keeping arrangements in place)

Under the guidelines for pre-release access, information contained in the tables is not given out in final form one day before publication and then only to nominated officials and ministers whose names are published on the HMRC website.

To avoid the possible disclosure of information about individual families, values have been supressed when underlying counts are low. An entry of ‘low’ in a table indicates that the data has been rounded down to 0 or has been withheld in line with HMRC’s Dominance and Disclosure policy.