Migration from tax credits to universal credit

NedS

Newcad said:

peteuk said:

NedS said:

The latest stats I have seen show 26% of TC claims are being closed with no claim to UC having been made.

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Do they say if this is due to not claiming or not being eligible? (Just out of interest)  

To be fair you can't expect the DWP to know that.

All the DWP can do is tell people that the law has changed and so they now need to claim UC instead of Tax Credits.

If someone chooses not to claim claim UC the DWP can't force them to claim  UC or to say why they have chosen not to claim UC.

Exactly. These are managed migration claims, so people who have been invited to claim UC but their TC claims have then been closed after 3 months + 1 day as they have failed to make a claim for UC in the allotted managed migration notification period. A TC stop notice is otherwise sent as soon as a claim for UC is made and ID has been verified.

DWP cannot know why they have failed to make a UC claim, only the percentage that have. I suspect people will have a whole range of different reasons for not claiming UC (CTC's were about to end anyway as child leaving education, only receive a very low amount of TC so not worth the hassle/effort, mis-information or understanding around capital/savings, not wanting to regularly engage with jobcentre, negative press about UC etc)

The self-employed are one group that are known to be particularly unhappy about the move to UC given the increased frequency of reporting, the extra scrutiny of earnings and expenses, the increased level of engagement and appointments etc. Given the extra hoops they must now jump through, the uptake of UC may understandably be lower.