The proportion of tax credit claimants not moving to universal credit (UC) when required to – and losing all of their benefits as a result – has jumped to 39%, up from 25% in July, DWP figures published today show. That’s more than 180,000 people whose ‘legacy benefit’ claim has been terminated without safely making the move to UC.
Court of Appeal upholds decision that universal credit payments can be backdated on revision, but claimants risk still being thwarted by DWP IT design flaws and those subject to managed migration face ‘double whammy’ loss of transitional protections and backdated payments.
Managed migration to universal credit is about to expand to DWP legacy benefit claimants. The stakes are high, and we're calling for the DWP to slow down and put more safeguards in place.
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.
Two-thirds of people sent a migration notice between November 2022 and March 2023 made a successful UC claim before their migration deadline. A further 5 per cent made a claim after their deadline had passed. And 28 per cent did not claim UC at all and had their legacy benefit payments terminated. We are concerned that a sizeable minority of claimants are falling through the gaps.
The DWP’s research during the discovery phase of managed migration to universal credit (UC) concluded that ‘on the whole households are able to make the move to UC.’ But we are finding that, when issues do arise, the consequences can be serious for claimants causing stress, budgeting difficulties and debt.
Families in 2022 are facing the greatest threat to their living standards in living memory. Much has been written about these pressures, but to put them into context, we need to understand what has been happening to children’s and families’ costs in recent years. The Cost of a Child reports have been produced annually for a decade, and this 2022 edition presents the latest evidence of what families need as a minimum, and how this compares to the actual incomes of low-income families.
Now that DWP have published the draft amending regulations which will permit the wider rollout of universal credit (UC) i we have a good early understanding of the way in which people will experience managed migration. Furthermore, CPAG has some direct experience of the way in which people managed migrated to UC will be treated by DWP.
Child Poverty Action Group’s annual cost of a child report looks at how much it costs families to provide a minimum socially acceptable standard of living for their children. Since 2012, this report series has systematically monitored the minimum cost of a child. This report updates those calculations for 2021 and outlines the factors affecting the latest figures. The total cost of raising a child to the age of 18 now stands at £160,692 for a couple and £193,801 for a lone parent.