When could managed migration to UC resume? 31 May 2020 at 8:37PM in Benefits & tax credits 14 replies 392 views

stupidaspie

I myself can only speculate, but I know some MSE members work for the DWP and might know things nobody else does. But they might not tell if it's covered by the Official Secrets Act...

poppy12345

Resume? it's not even started yet. They did start a pilot for the Harrogate area but up until January only 13 households out of 10,000 had move across. https://inews.co.uk/news/uk/universal-credit-managed-migration-pilot-harrogate-dwp-benefit-1379163

calcotti

Recent events will have increased the number who have ‘naturally’ migrated (and therefore without the benefit of transitional protection).

stupidaspie

I was alluding to the pilot but I remember a mention of more migrations in November 2020. I think it's very likely to be postponed in light of recent developments.

poppy12345

stupidaspie said:

but I remember a mention of more migrations in November 2020.

Not that i know of. The only area is Harrogate.

calcotti

stupidaspie said:

I was alluding to the pilot but I remember a mention of more migrations in November 2020. I think it's very likely to be postponed in light of recent developments.

I don’t recall a definite timetable had been given but the expectation was that managed migration would resume later in 2020 following a review of the Harrogate pilot.
https://revenuebenefits.org.uk/universal-credit/guidance/existing-tax-credit-claimants/managed-migration/
I think it’s safe to assume that the original timetable is unlikely to be met.
The OBR predicted in March that managed migration will not be completed until 2026 (two years later than the government timetable). That prediction was made before the impact of coronavirus. See pages 105-107 https://cdn.obr.uk/EFO_March-2020_Accessible.pdf

Icequeen1

calcotti said:

stupidaspie said:

I was alluding to the pilot but I remember a mention of more migrations in November 2020. I think it's very likely to be postponed in light of recent developments.

I don’t recall a definite timetable had been given but the expectation was that managed migration would resume later in 2020 following a review of the Harrogate pilot.
https://revenuebenefits.org.uk/universal-credit/guidance/existing-tax-credit-claimants/managed-migration/
I think it’s safe to assume that the original timetable is unlikely to be met.

The original plan was pilot July 2019 to July 2020 and then return to Parliament to get permission to scale up from Nov 2020. As poppy says, given the glacially slow progress in Harrogate, i doubt that it would have been scalable from Nov 2020, and definitely not now. But as you say, more natural migrations mean far less to manage migrate

NedS

I would imagine any plans that had been made went out the window with Covid-19. As Calcotti said above, there has been a huge natural migration onto UC due to Covid-19, which (a) has massively increased the numbers claiming UC, and (b) has given the system a real life stress test and created plenty of real life data for the top brass to analyse over the next however many months. I wouldn't expect any further "managed" movement this year as the focus will be on getting back to some sense of normality over the coming months. My guess is there are still more natural migrations to happen, once jobcentres reopen and legacy JSA claimants realise they could be nearly £100/month better off on UC.

huckster

I was going to agree with NedS, as that is totally logical. But sometimes Government don't act in the logical way expected.

Would not surprise me, if DWP started the managed migration process in Autumn 2020, as there might be other factors which are considered. DWP will have received additional budget to deal with the large volume of extra work, this includes employment of many additional staff including some temporary through agencies. Universal Credit computer system may be seen to have handled the volume of extra claims well and this may give them confidence that it can cope with managed migration. UC computer system has been quickly re-programmed to deal with changed processes to help handle sudden volume of extra work.  DWP have had to enable staff from many different benefit types to work together to process the additional work. This cross department working will be key to handling migration of cases.

If some of the managed migration work can be handled without any requirement to have face to face appointments at Job Centres, then I could see the process starting later in the year. 

TELLIT01

As all claimants to income related benefits were originally supposed to be on UC by the end of 2016 I wouldn't put too much confidence in any dates issued by Government in this area.

[Deleted User]

I applied for UC due to being self employed and no.money coming in. I'm not able to go back to tax credits. I feel shafted but I have to live with it now