Change description : 2025-03-27 09:30:00: Updated the ‘Statistical Work Programme’ and ‘Changes made to DWP statistics since April 2020’ attachments. [Guidance and regulation]
This statistical work programme provides information on planned changes to Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) statistics and changes under development.
Published an updated version of the statistical work programme.
29 January 2025
Updated the information in sections 3, 4 and 6 of the 'DWP statistical work programme'.
20 December 2024
[1] In "Statistical work programme", moved Below Average Resources statistics and Children in Low Income Families statistics from "Under development" to "Confirmed changes coming to statistics"; removed Work and Health Programme statistics and Benefit Cap statistics from "Confirmed changes coming to statistics" because these have been published; updated entries for DWP Benefit Statistics and Universal Credit under "Quality of our statistics". [2] In "Changes made to DWP statistics since April 2020" added changes to the Work and Health Programme statistics made in November 2024 and changes to the Benefit Cap statistics made in December 2024.
27 November 2024
Updated the information in sections 2, 3, 4, 6, 8, 9 and 10 of the 'DWP statistical work programme'.
Also updated 'Changes made to DWP statistics since April 2020': sections on 'Pensioners’ Incomes Statistics', 'The Employment of Disabled People', 'Universal Credit', 'Universal Credit Work Capability Assessment statistics' and added new section 'Move to Universal Credit statistics'.
30 October 2024
Updated sections 3, 4, 5 and 6 of the 'Statistical work programme' and a change to the bullet point under the headings 'Work and Unemployment, Benefit Sanctions statistics'.
25 September 2024
Updated 'DWP statistical work programme': sections 3, 4, 6 and 10 - housing and heating. And 'Changes made to DWP statistics since April 2020': sections on Child Maintenance Service Statistics and Universal Credit Work Capability Assessment statistics.
30 August 2024
Updates have been made to the 'Statistical Work Programme' and 'Changes made to DWP statistics since April 2020' HTML documents to reflect the latest developments and changes to the statistics'.
31 July 2024
Updated sections 3, 4 and 6 of the 'Statistical work programme' document.
Updated the 'Changes made to DWP statistics since April 2020' document. New information has been added about the following statistics: 'Housing Benefit Speed of processing', 'Workplace pension participation and savings trends of eligible employees', and 'Universal Credit and Child Tax Credit claimants: statistics related to the policy to provide support for a maximum of 2 children'.
26 June 2024
Updates to 'Statistical Work Programme' and 'Changes made to DWP statistics since April 2020' HTML documents to reflect latest developments in terms of announcements and suspensions of statistics.
31 May 2024
Updated sections 3, 4, 5 and 6 of the 'Statistical work programme' document. Also added 'unfulfilled eligibility in the benefit system' statistics to the list of statistics in Annex C (DWP statistical releases).
Also updated the section about 'Fraud and error in the benefit system' statistics in the 'Changes made to DWP statistics since April 2020' document.
24 April 2024
Updates to developments, suspensions of statistics, and wording that has been updated to follow most recent OSR guidance
3 April 2024
Updates made to the Statistical Work Programme and DWP statistics since April 2020 HTML documents.
4 March 2024
Updates have been added regarding the Statistical Work Programme and changes made to DWP statistics since April 2020.
2 February 2024
On the 'Statistical work programme' page in Section 3, the Personal Independence Payment information has been removed, and 2 new rows with Benefit combination and Universal Credit information has been added. In Section 5, 'Quality of our statistics', wording has been changed to reflect reinstating statistics for Benefit Sanctions statistics.
On the 'Changes made to DWP statistics since April 2020' page, an additional paragraph has been added at the end of the 'Personal Independence Payment' section to reflect information around attempts to claim PIP following a DLA claim.
19 December 2023
Updated section 3, Confirmed changes coming to statistics, replacing the Employment of Disabled People row with a new row, Universal Credit Work Capability Assessment. Updated section 5, Quality of our statistics, removed the rows of the table for the Publication DWP benefit statistics.
10 October 2023
Updated the 'Statistical work programme', in section 3, 4, 5 and annex C.
Updated the 'Changes made to DWP statistics since April 2020', under Personal Independent Payment. Added new section 'Economic Labour market Status of Individuals aged 50 and over'
30 August 2023
Updated the 'Statistical work programme' document. Updated the information in section 2.2 (Reproducible Analytical Pipelines). Added information about 'Economic Labour Market Status of Individuals aged 50 and over statistics' and 'Personal Independence Payments statistics' to section 3 (Confirmed changes coming to statistics). Updated the information about 'Personal Independence Payments statistics' in section 4 (Under development). Updated the information about 'Benefit sanctions statistics' and 'Universal Credit statistics' in section 5 (Quality of our statistics). Added 'Move to Universal Credit statistics' to section 9 (Annex C: DWP statistical releases).
19 June 2023
Updated the 'Statistical work programme' document. Added information about 'Universal Credit Work Capability Assessment experimental statistics' to the table in section 4. Added 'Restart Scheme' and 'Universal Credit Work Capability Assessments' statistics to the lists in annex C.
Also updated the 'Changes made to DWP statistics since April 2020' document. Added new information about 'Restart Scheme' and 'Universal Credit Work Capability Assessment' statistics. Updated the information about State Pension in the section on Spending, Fraud and Error.
9 May 2023
New information about Fraud and Error in the benefit system statistics and Restart Scheme statistics has been added to the table in section 3 (Confirmed changes coming to statistics). The information about Universal Credit statistics has been updated in the table in section 5 (Quality of our statistics).
24 March 2023
Updated the 'Statistical work programme' document. Revised the information in section 2.4 (Linking survey and administrative data). Updated the table in section 4 (Under development) with new information about Personal Independence Payments statistics and Family Resources Survey statistics. Updated the table in section 5 (Quality of our statistics) with new information about Child Maintenance Service statistics. Revised the information about Family Resources Survey statistics in section 7 (Annex A: Statistical reviews and developments). In addition, the following entries have also been updated in the 'Changes made to DWP statistics since April 2020' document: Benefit Combinations, Personal Independence Payment, Family Resources Survey, Households below average income, and Income dynamics.
23 February 2023
Updated the 'Statistical work programme' document. Added information to Section 3 (confirmed changes coming to statistics) about upcoming releases of the Benefit Combinations, Family Resource Survey, Households Below Average Income, Income Dynamics, and Personal Independence Payments statistics. Changes have been made to the table entries for DWP benefit statistics and Universal Credit statistics in section 5 (Quality of our statistics). And updated the 'Changes made to DWP statistics since April 2020' document. The April 2020 to March 2021 data behind the March 2022 Family Resources Survey tables has been added to Stat- Xplore. A new section about change to the employment of disabled people statistics has been added.
8 February 2023
Updated the Statistical work programme document. Added information to Section 3 (confirmed changes coming to statistics) about new quarterly statistics on the number of people on Universal Credit (UC) Work Capability Assessment (WCA) by stage of process and monthly decisions and outcomes.
31 January 2023
Section 3 has been updated to include dates and details of upcoming changes to statistics. Section 6 now includes new information on publications experiencing delays or suspensions.
25 November 2022
Updated the statistical work programme document - minor amendments made throughout and added information to section 2.5 (Linking survey and administrative data) about the establishment of an Expert Advisory Group on survey-based income statistics.
27 October 2022
Published revised information about Reproducible Analytical Pipelines in section 2.3 of the statistical work programme document. New information about Alternative Claimant Count statistics has been added to the Work and Unemployment section of the changes made to DWP statistics since April 2020 document. Additional information about Universal Credit statistics has been added to the changes document.
6 October 2022
Updated the Winter Fuel Payment statistics information in section 6 - the statistics releases for both winter 2020 to 2021 and winter 2021 to 2022 will be published on 2 November 2022.
4 October 2022
In the Statistical work programme document, the information about Personal Independence Payment figures in section 2.4 (Devolution) has been updated. The tables in section 3 (Confirmed changes coming to statistics) and section 6 (Quality of our statistics) have also been updated. In the Changes made to DWP statistics since April 2020 document, the information about the 'DWP Benefits Statistical Summary (Quarterly)' and 'Nationality of working age benefit claimants' releases has been updated.
5 September 2022
A new section (5. Discovery) has been added to the statistical work programme document. This section provides information about proposals for new statistics. Sections in the document after the new section have been re-numbered, but no changes to the content have been made.
26 July 2022
Revised section 2.2 (Examine-a-Stat) and section 2.3 (Reproducible Analytical Pipelines). Updated the information about Disability Living Allowance in section 2.4 (Devolution), added a table of changes in section 3 (Confirmed changes coming to statistics) and updated the information in section 5 (Quality of our statistics) about DWP benefit statistics, National Insurance number allocations to adult overseas nationals entering the UK statistics and Winter Fuel Payment statistics.
28 June 2022
Revised section 2.4 (Devolution), section 3 (Confirmed changes coming to statistics), section 4 (Under development) and section 5 (Quality of our statistics). In addition, Annex B (Changes delivered since April 2020) of the work programme has now been published as a separate document.
27 May 2022
Updated the table in section 3 (confirmed changes coming to statistics) and added a new entry about Universal Credit statistics to the table in section 4 (statistics under development).
4 May 2022
Updated the table in section 3 about confirmed changes coming to statistics and the information about the impact of COVID-19 on the Family Resources Survey in section 8 (Annex B: Changes delivered since April 2020). Also added 'Combined working age absolute low income and material deprivation estimates' to the list of DWP statistical releases in section 9, annex C.
8 April 2022
Updated the table in section 3 (confirmed changes coming to statistics) and added a brand new section 5 about the quality of our statistics.
28 January 2022
Updated version. The main change is the inclusion of a new annex, 'Annex A: Statistical reviews and developments'.
17 December 2021
Updated the tables about confirmed changes coming to statistics (in section 3) and statistics under development (in section 4). Updated the information about the DWP Benefits Statistical Summary, Personal Independence Payment statistics and Universal Credit statistics in Annex A (Changes delivered since April 2020). Added new information about Cold Weather Payments statistics to Annex A.
12 October 2021
Removed an incorrect reference to Maternity Allowance from the section on changes to the Benefit Combinations statistics in Annex A.