The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) is moving people over from legacy benefits to Universal Credit through its Managed Migration programme
The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) is sending thousands more letters to households over the next few months ahead of a major change to payments.
Currently, the benefits department is working to move people claiming older “legacy benefits” onto Universal Credit through a process called Managed Migration. As part of the plan, letters called “migration notices” are being sent to households claiming certain benefits, asking them to move over to Universal Credit.
The benefits included in this shake-up are Tax Credits, Child Tax Credits, Income-based Jobseeker’s Allowance (JSA), Income Support, Housing Benefit, and Income-related Employment and Support Allowance (ESA).
The DWP recently confirmed that it has increased the number of migration notices being sent to households on income-related Employment and Support Allowance (ESA). In February 60,000 letters were sent, however the department is aiming to increase this to 83,000.
The final round of migration notices for all legacy benefits is set to be sent in September this year. The move aims to “allow a little more time before the end of March 2026 to provide support for our more vulnerable customers and complete the migration of ESA cases to Universal Credit”.
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This deadline was originally set for the end of 2028 but has been brought forward. The DWP announced that it had allocated an extra £15million to its Help-To-Claim initiative. First annoucned in November last year, the scheme provides support to those claiming ESA on their move onto Universal Credit.
Under the DWP’s Managed Migration plan, once claimants receive their Migration Notice letter, they have three months to submit a claim for Universal Credit. If they don’t, their current claim will be stopped. Your managed migration notice will give you an exact date for when your claim will end. This means households will need to act swiftly when their letter arrives.
Once you’ve made a claim for Universal Credit, it usually takes up to five weeks for your first Universal Credit payment to arrive.
If you claim Universal Credit by the deadline or within one month of the deadline, then you may get an extra payment – which is called a transitional element. This is intended to ensure that you are not worse off on Universal Credit compared to your older legacy benefit, at the point of transfer, with circumstances unchanged.
If you miss your deadline day, there is also a Final Deadline Day. This is the day that would have been the last day of your monthly Universal Credit “assessment period” if you had claimed the benefit on your original deadline day.
If you fail to claim Universal Credit by the final deadline day, your legacy benefits will have already ended, and you will have missed out on the opportunity to receive the transitional protection payment. You can still make a Universal Credit claim, but you would be treated as a new claimant. The first legacy benefit to be scrapped completely was Tax Credits, which stopped in April of this year.
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