Managed migration 3
The DWP is in the process of moving legacy benefit claimants onto universal credit (UC) through managed migration. This report summarises the outcomes of managed migration to date, and our findings from interviews with 19 tax credit claimants who had received a ‘migration notice’ informing them they have three months to apply for UC before their tax credit payments are terminated.
The latest data shows that by the end of August 2023, 118,000 legacy benefit claimants had been sent a migration notice. Among those, 64,000 had reached their deadline date including 16,000 who did not claim UC and had their legacy benefit payments terminated, a non-move rate of 27 per cent. Claimants who had their legacy benefits terminated were previously receiving, on average, £300 a month through tax credits.
Our interviews show that claimants did not have the information they needed or wanted to understand how moving to UC would affect them. Such misinformation and misunderstanding are likely to be reasons some people are not moving to UC despite having a strong financial incentive to do so.
The DWP should slow the pace of managed migration roll out to:
- Collect more evidence about the reasons people are not responding to their migration notice.
- Develop a booklet of information for claimants which offers important supplementary information about the transition from legacy benefits to UC alongside their migration notice.
- Clarify how the DWP is interpreting the transitional protection regulations. The current ambiguity is undermining welfare rights advisers’ ability to calculate a claimant’s entitlement and support claimants to make informed budgeting decisions about managed migration.
- Amend the migration notice to explicitly mention that claimants can get bespoke information about their entitlement to UC through the help-to-claim service.