The UK Government has announced that it “remains committed” to completing the managed migration move from legacy benefits to Universal Credit within the planned timescale. Chancellor Jeremy Hunt announced in November that people on Employment and Support Allowance alone (ESA) will not be moved from the older IT system to Universal Credit until 2028/29.
However, benefit claimants may not be aware that by the end of 2024/25 the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) aims to have completed the moves of all legacy cases with Tax Credits - including those on both ESA and Tax Credits, all cases on Income Support (IS) and Jobseeker’s Allowance (JSA) and all Housing Benefit (HB) only cases.
In a newly published report, reviewing the Discovery Phase of the managed migration process, DWP said the moves in 2024/25 will allow HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) to close down the Tax Credit system for those of working age and DWP to close down Income Support and JSA, “generating savings for taxpayers”.
In the report on GOV.UK, DWP said: “In 2023/24, we plan to move cases that are solely in receipt of working Tax Credit and/or Child Tax Credit, with the remaining Tax Credit cases (which also receive DWP benefits) and IS, HB and JSA in 2024/25.”
In January 2022, DWP restarted the design work on managed migration with a Discovery phase - the focus being to learn how to successfully move people on legacy benefits to Universal Credit.
Although DWP refers to this process as ‘managed migration’, every individual will need to make a claim themselves to move to Universal Credit.
The review also states: “In the early part of 2023/24, we will be testing our ability to scale the approach that has been developed during Discovery and we will continue to learn and refine the process to ensure as many claimants as possible safely transition to Universal Credit.”
Once the legacy benefit cases with Working Tax Credits or Child Tax Credits have been completed, DWP estimates some 800,000 ESA cases will remain after 2024/25.
These claimants will not be moved until 2028/29 and the number of cases remaining is expected to fall to around 600,000 by 2028, taking into account natural migration resulting from changes of circumstances and claims coming to an end.
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