UNITE and the benefit cap: building a new data platform Daniel Brown & William Baxter - DWP

Background "This is the biggest reform of the welfare system in a generation," “Universal Credit is at the heart of the Government’s reforms” Universal Credit Income related JSA Income related ESA Income Support Working Tax Credits Child Tax Credits Housing Benefit

Key question: “ Can we use existing administrative data to create an analytical dataset that will bring together all the key elements of Universal Credit”.

Data structure UNITE DWPHMRCLA Source systems

UNITE population? Includes Tax Credit, DWP and LA customers Over 18 million benefit claims Transformed to simulate Universal Credit

UNITE population? But…. Wider than Universal Credit 29 Million benefit spells Covers most DWP benefits

Challenges Household level Linking large amounts of data New benefits Quality assurance

Population HMRC DWP HB Universal Credit timeseries Jan-11Feb-11Mar-11Apr-11May-11Jun-11Jul-11Aug-11 Household Individual

Universal Credit Caseloads/ migration Geographical analysis Interactions between legacy benefits Impact of UC on pensioners Benefit Cap

Benefit Cap: Background Introduced from April 2013 by a reduction to HB payments Cap (maximum limit) on the total amount of benefits that people can get ensures that unemployed families will not receive more in benefits than the average income for working families Expected limits: £500 per week for households comprising couples and lone parents £350 per week for single persons

Benefits in and out of scope LA administered benefits (Housing Benefit) DWP benefits (inc. JSA, ESA and Income Support) HMRC benefits (Child Tax Credit and Child Benefit) Exemptions will apply (Working Tax Credit, disability related benefits)

Building the Cap population dataset HMRC DWP HB HB claimants only Identify those who are in scope for the cap: Apply exclusions - people with disablities, workers. Identify families whose benefit income exceeds the maximum cap amount. 63,000 families identified as being in scope for the benefit cap Benefits ClaimedNumber of Families % All52, LA & DWP5, LA only1, Unite Families claiming HB

Building the cap population dataset Use of a common identifier throughout (all data sources have already been matched to NINOs) Use of WTC to identify employment, CB data to identify number of dependent children and DLA to identify people with disabilities All benefit rates increased to allow for annual budget increases in the run up to April 2013

Supporting operations address matching from CIS to generate mailshot which was sent to over 80,000 individuals Provision of personal information to enable JCP offices and LA’s to offer employment support and housing advice

Amount capped based on benefit data to November 2011 compared to the Impact Assessment

Regional Impacts

Limitations It’s good but…as with any administrative data, not perfect: not real-time data relies on data sharing gateways across Government (not in place for MOD war pensions exemption) does not allow for modelling all exemptions (e.g. 12 months employment spells)

Summary Built a new data platform across Government benefits Used for operational support for the introduction of the benefit cap Benefit data allows us to model many family characteristics Some limitations – e.g. timeliness Will support evaluation, analysis and statistics as well as operations