Thousands of people claiming Housing Benefit will be receiving important letters from the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP from today.
The DWP is currently working to move Brits claiming "legacy benefits" onto the newer Universal Credit and the process is called "Managed Migration". The benefits department is moving people over in stages and from June the DWP will be focusing on those claiming Housing Benefit only - this will impact around 100,000 people.
Once you receive your migration notice you will have three months to put in a claim for Universal Credit. If you don't, you could lose your benefit entitlement. As part of the DWP's ongoing plan from July, people claiming Employment Support Allowance (ESA) with Child Tax Credits will receive their migration notices, followed by Jobseekers Allowance (JSA) claimants in September. Households claiming Tax Credits alongside Housing Benefits started to receive their notices in April, this means they have until July to put in their claim.
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. Originally, the process was set to be completed by 2028. However, the Government's plans changed earlier this year after Prime Minister Rishi Sunak's 'Sick Note Generation" speech. Now, all migration notices will be sent by the end of December 2025.
What to do when you receive your managed migration notice
As mentioned earlier, once you receive your notice you will have three months to put a claim in for Universal Credit. 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 for help with your application.
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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. Top up payments are made available to people who will be worse off claiming Universal Credit and you can check how the move will affect you using an online benefits calculator. The three benefit calculators recommended by the DWP include:
Policy in Practice calculator
entitledto calculator
Turn2us calculator
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