Income-related benefits: estimates of take-up
Source: gov.uk (2025-10-30)

Estimates of the take-up of the main income-related benefits by caseload and expenditure in Great Britain.

The Income-related benefits: estimates of take-up: financial year ending 2024 (https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/income-related-benefits-estimates-of-take-up-financial-year-ending-2024) were published on Thursday 30 October 2025.

The FYE 2024 publication only focuses on pension age income related benefits:
- Pension Credit
- Housing Benefit
There is a specific challenge in creating a Universal Credit (UC) take-up measure and interpreting and communicating its results within the scope of the Code of Practice for Statistics. We are therefore unable to estimate UC take-up rates at present. For more information regarding this, please see the release strategy document (https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/income-related-benefits-estimates-of-take-up-release-strategy)

Key updates within this release include:

From FYE 2024, we have incorporated improved linking of administrative data to the Family Resources Survey, to better identify those in receipt of Pension Credit or Housing Benefit. Take-up estimates were already based on administrative data linking and there are minimal impacts to estimates with this latest improvement to the approach used. This methodological change was implemented from FYE 2024 and not backdated to previous years.

From FYE 2024, a further change in methodology was introduced, moving to an approach which uses more extensive calibration to derive sample weights for the survey data, used to obtain estimates for Entitled Non-Recipient cases. This improves the representativeness of the survey sample, for the estimation of Entitled Non-Recipient cases. It also ensures a consistent approach with other statistics. Investigations show minimal impacts of this change on estimates. This methodological change was implemented from FYE 2024 and not backdated to previous years.

A few small errors were identified in the historical data tables. They have been corrected in the data tables for this release and so previous data tables should not be used.

Ad hoc release

DWP released an ad-hoc publication Analysis of households potentially eligible for Pension Credit, and eligible households in receipt of Pension Credit – 2023 to 2024 (https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/ad-hoc-statistical-analyses-2025), on Thursday 30 of October. This ad-hoc statistical release provides analysis of the characteristics of households potentially eligible for, but not claiming, Pension Credit. The ad-hoc statistics do not include national estimates for Great Britain, instead, it provides analysis at a sub-national level (below Great Britain).

Find future publication dates in our statistics release calendar (https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/announcements?utf8=%E2%9C%93&keywords=take-up&organisations%5B%5D=department-for-work-pensions) and other DWP statistics on the Statistics at DWP page (https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/department-for-work-pensions/about/statistics).

If you have any queries about this re-instatement, please contact xxx@xxx.xx (mailto:xxx@xxx.xx)

Note, our statistical practice is regulated by the Office for Statistics Regulation (OSR).