Source · Select Committees · Public Accounts Committee
Recommendation 15
15
Accepted
Twenty-one percent of Tax Credit households failed to migrate to Universal Credit
Conclusion
At December 2023, nearly all the migration notices that the Department had sent (99.5%) had gone to households in receipt of Tax Credits alone. Of the 148,700 cases closed, 31,500 households (21%) had not applied for UC and their legacy benefit had been stopped. The Department found during its testing that take-up for Tax Credit claimants was lower than for claimants of other legacy benefits, and, as a result, it expects the proportion of people not moving to UC to fall when it begins migrating claimants of the other benefits from April 2024.28
Government Response Summary
The government agrees and states the recommendation is implemented, committing to publishing quarterly statistics on non-claim rates for wider legacy benefit types as they migrate and to publishing results of a dedicated survey of Tax Credit non-claims by the end of the year.
Government Response
Accepted
HM Government
Accepted
3.1 The government agrees with the Committee’s recommendation. Recommendation implemented 3.2 The department currently publishes statistics on claim rates to Universal Credit, by legacy benefit type, on a quarterly basis. These statistics will start to include the non-claim rates for wider legacy benefit types (over and above the initial Tax Credits cohort) as these additional cohorts begin to be migrated in sufficient numbers onto Universal Credit. 3.3 The amount of data available on non-claim rates by legacy benefit type will still be quite limited for the August 2024 publication (which will include data up to the end of June 2024), due to the migration timescales. 3.4 The non-claim rates will be monitored closely via the Move to Universal Credit Implementation Control Centre, whilst they are close to forecasts presently, should the rates be higher than expected from discovery work, further analysis and investigation will be undertaken. If the insights from this work suggest there are issues to be addressed, the Universal Credit Programme will develop remedial actions based on the insights. The department will be content to share details of these actions with the Committee, should they be required. 3.5 In addition, the department will publish the results of the dedicated survey of Tax Credit non-claims and associated learning, by the end of the year.