The new plans will see people claiming income-related Employment Support Allowance (ESA) moved onto Universal Credit by April 2025 – a full three years earlier than previously planned
Hundreds of thousands of households will be moved onto Universal Credit sooner under new Government plans.
The new plans will see people claiming income-related Employment Support Allowance (ESA) moved onto Universal Credit by April 2025, a full three years earlier than previously planned. The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) is currently working to move Brits claiming “legacy benefits” onto the newer Universal Credit. The process is called “Managed Migration” and currently, the DWP are targeting those claiming Tax Credits and later this year, those claiming Jobseekers Allowance will be told to move over.
In the 2022 Autumn Statement, the Government delayed the transition for those claiming income-related ESA and housing benefit to 2028. However, last week Prime Minister Rishi Sunak shared his “Welfare Reform” act which included the U-turn, with the benefits department set to start contacting all 600,000 households claiming these benefits later this year.
This unexpected shift was confirmed by the DWP on X. Following the speech, they posted: “The Prime Minister’s welfare reform speech earlier today announced the acceleration of the Managed Migration of legacy ESA/ESA & HB cases to #UniversalCredit. All migration notices will now be sent by the end of December 2025. We will work with stakeholders on the detailed plans.”
The benefits being scrapped by the DWP are the older “legacy” benefits which include:
- Working Tax Credit
- Child Tax Credit
- Income-based Jobseeker’s Allowance (JSA)
- Income support
- Housing Benefit
- Income related Employment Support Allowance (ESA)
The DWP has been phasing out the legacy benefits for a few years and restarted the move again last year after briefly pausing during the Coronavirus pandemic. At the time of the managed migration restarting, around 2.6million people were still claiming old-style legacy benefits in the UK.
As mentioned before, the DWP is sending letters to those claiming these benefits asking them to move to Universal Credit. It is being conducted in stages and when it is your turn you will receive a “migration notice” in the post. Once you receive one of these letters you have three months to put in a claim for Universal Credit. If you don’t then your benefits could be stopped.
You can put in your claim online, or over the phone by calling the Universal Credit Migration Notice helpline on 0800 169 0328, or you can also ask your local Job Centre. Once you have made your claim, you will have to wait five weeks until your first Universal Credit payment and you will continue to receive it going forward – unless your circumstances change.
