Consultation outcome

Response to DWP statistics publication frequency: statistical notice

Published 19 December 2019

Summary

The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) would like to thank all the users of the statistics that contributed to the consultation on the proposal to reduce the frequency of the benefit cap, Personal Independence Payment, benefit combinations, Housing Benefit debt recovery and Housing Benefit speed of processing statistical publications.

Given the decrease in the value and impact it would have for numerous users, the Head of Profession has decided to maintain the frequency of those publications. The consultation has helped reinforce the links with users and the evidence gathered through the consultation will help DWP to better target further user engagement.

DWP received 26 responses, mainly from divisions across DWP, local authorities and external bodies such as the Learning and Work Institute, with the broad majority in favour of maintaining the current frequency. Users have usefully provided specific examples of the impact it would have on their work if we were to implement the consultation proposals to reduce the frequency of the statistics.

In some cases, there were suggestions on further alternatives, particularly around the timing of releases. The statistical team has now reviewed and summarised all the responses for each publication.

Background

The benefit cap, benefit combinations, Housing Benefit debt recovery and Housing Benefit speed of processing statistics are produced by the cross-benefit and migration statistics team, part of the Data and Statistics division of the Department for Work and Pensions.

These statistics cover a range of topics, including in-depth information on the number and characteristics of:

• claimants claiming one or more of a range of benefits
• households whose benefits are being capped
• the performance of local authorities in processing their claims

The Cross-Benefit and Migration statistics team have consulted users of the publications to understand the value of the current frequency and consider this alongside the value of refocusing the resources of the team towards development activities.

Annex 1 presents the consultation questions.

The consultation

The Code of Practice for Official Statistics emphasises that Official Statistics should support society’s information needs and maximise their public value by being useful and easy to access, remain relevant and support understanding of important issues.

The guidance clearly indicates that the producers of statistics should therefore have a good understanding of how their statistics are being used and regularly review their relevance and usefulness through appropriate user engagement activities. This includes seeking user views on reducing the frequency of statistical outputs whenever it is appropriate to do so to maintain public value.

The consultation followed Government Statistical Service (GSS) consultation principles:

• asked for users’ views on the current frequency of statistics, including examples of use and the impact of possible proposed changes (it was clear that there was no proposed change to the data being released or the content of the publication itself)
• stated that the purpose was to understand whether the current frequency and timing of the publications was still right for users and whether statistical resources should be more focused towards development instead
• targeted all users of the different publications and therefore was announced through the GOV.UK pages ([email protected]), the publications themselves, DWP analytical forums and Central and Local Information Partnership (CLIP) groups
• had a 2-phase approach: an internal phase (DWP users only) that lasted for 3 weeks from 19 to 31 July, and an external phase (all users) that lasted for 10 weeks from the 31 July to 10 October
• was part of ongoing user engagement through user groups, publication and GOV.UK feedback channels

The scope of the consultation and specific proposals (in parenthesis, below) covered the following statistics:

• benefit cap Official Statistics (proposal: move from quarterly to publication every 6 months)
• benefit combination Experimental Statistics (proposal: move from quarterly to every 6 months or annual), which covers the following benefits:
  • Attendance Allowance
  • Bereavement Benefit
  • Carer’s Allowance
  • Disability Living Allowance
  • Employment and Support Allowance
  • Housing Benefit
  • Incapacity Benefit
  • Income Support
  • Jobseeker’s Allowance
  • Pension Credit
  • Personal Independence Payment
  • Severe Disablement Allowance
  • State Pension
  • Universal Credit
  • Widow’s Benefit
• Housing Benefit debt recovery National Statistics (proposal: move from every 6 months to annual)
• Housing Benefit speed of processing Official Statistics (proposal: move from quarterly to every 6 months or annual)
• Personal Independence Payment Official Statistics (proposal: move from quarterly to every 6 months)

In the second phase of the consultation, the Personal Independence Payment publication was no longer in scope given the amount of evidence against proposals gathered in the internal phase.

Responses to the consultation

There were 26 responses across DWP and a range of external organisations and local authorities. Across all responses, it was clear that they were supportive of maintaining the current frequencies of the different publications.

Benefit cap Official Statistics

Most respondents were supportive of maintaining the current frequency of these statistics given their use in responses to Parliamentary questions and freedom of information requests from both the public and members of Parliament. A reduction in the frequency of these statistics would affect the timeliness of the data and result in more ad-hoc analysis being produced.

There was reference to the high public interest for these statistics given the recent Supreme Court rulings and Work and Pensions Select Committee enquiries.

Alternative suggestions included DWP arranging future consultations with external stakeholders on the expansion of the data currently used in the publications. One respondent questioned if frequency were to be reduced what would be the implication for statistics reported on Stat-Xplore. Stat-Xplore is an online tool that has published data available for users to look at trends in data and create tables using this data.

Benefit combination Experimental Statistics

There was an overall support for maintaining the current frequency of these statistics because of their use as evidence in Local Industrial Strategies and decisions on subsidy allocations at the local authority level. Reducing these frequencies would result in a key measure being removed from performance monitoring frameworks at a local authority level.

The importance of these statistics is seen as particularly important after the removal of previous ‘Working age client group’ data, which provided insight on clients and their needs.

Other suggestions proposed by respondents were releasing the annual statistics close to the financial year in order to see what the impact of the benefit uprating would be on caseloads for individual benefits. A respondent mentioned the possibility of aligning the statistics’ release with the current release of data through Stat-Xplore if the frequency were reduced.

Housing Benefit debt recovery National Statistics

A consensus amongst respondents was to maintain the current frequency of these statistics given their use in producing estimates for fraud and error across the benefits managed by DWP. Therefore, a reduction in frequency would impact on the published estimates for an important departmental performance measure.

These statistics also provide a useful metric for comparing the performance of individual local authorities against each other or over time. It is therefore particularly useful in engagements between the department and local authorities.

Housing Benefit speed of processing Official Statistics

There was an agreement across respondents to maintain the current frequency of these statistics given their use in debates on the Universal Credit and Housing Benefit systems.

In addition, these statistics are used in the fraud and error publication, specifically to provide an adjustment for the underlying data. A reduction in publication frequency would also affect the overall benefit figures reported. The current timing of this publication means that previous year’s data is currently used.

DWP’s decision and future actions

The cross-benefit and migration statistics team has carefully considered all the responses and the impact of the proposed reductions in frequency. It was great to see new evidence detailing the importance of these statistics in the work of users and the positive impact the efforts to publish timely statistics has on the value of the publications.

The Head of Profession for Statistics in DWP is responsible for deciding whether to reduce the frequency of DWP Official Statistics. He considered all the collated evidence and weighed this against the value of reducing the frequency and decided to maintain the current frequency.

The team also considered the possible alternative suggestions on the timing of the different publications, but these were not compatible with the current availability of the underlying data. It has been decided the current timings for these releases will also be maintained. However, it is important to acknowledge the benefits of bringing forward the release for users, because if data was available sooner this could provide evidence for bringing forward the publications.

The consultation was useful in gathering further evidence on the use of the statistics covered by the consultation. The benefits of this are two-fold. Firstly, it will help in challenging further proposals on publication frequency when resources are strained, by ensuring that the current frequency is considered crucial to these statistics’ value. Secondly, it will help the cross-benefit and migration statistics team to better target future user engagement when considering changes to the statistics.

We are also grateful for responses which suggested changes to these publications’ content which will be used as part of an ongoing review of user needs. Another benefit of the consultation has been the strengthening and widening of links with a range of users and we would encourage all users to provide feedback regularly on how we can further improve our statistics.

Annex 1: consultation questions

The questions used in the consultation are as follows:

As user of these statistics, it would be very helpful to understand from you:

a) Whether you support the reduced frequency of release or reasons why this would impact on you as a user of the statistics. Please be specific in providing your reasons.

b) If you use one or more of the publications above, what is/are the best month/s to publish. Please let us know if you use the published data as input into any other publication or a decision that happens at a particular point in time in the year.

Annex 2: further information on the publication

1. Benefit cap

Status: Official Statistics

The benefit cap publication provides statistics on the number of benefit units (referred to within the publication as ‘households’) who have had Housing Benefit or Universal Credit capped, either in a particular month (point in time caseload) or overall (cumulative caseload). Households may have their HB or UC capped if they receive benefits which would total more than the benefit cap limit. The limit varies according to whether households are in London, and have dependents. Statistics on the capping of UC are currently experimental. The publication is produced quarterly and also contains statistics on the amount of HB or UC that households have capped, the number of households which move off the cap (off-flow) and those who move from being capped under HB to being capped under UC.

2. Personal Independence Payment

Status: Official Statistics

The Personal Independence Payment (PIP) statistics publication contains statistics on the number of PIP registrations, clearances and claims in payment, as well as the average clearance times for both normal and special rules claims for the quarter (where special rules refers to claimants who have been diagnosed as terminally ill). The summary also provides statistics on claimants who have requested a mandatory reconsideration (MR) of their application, and the outcomes and clearance times of these MRs. Statistics reveal the proportion of claimants according to their disabling condition, as well as the level of payment that has been awarded (standard or enhanced), and the proportion of claimants who receive the daily living award, mobility award, or both. Recently the report also included cohort statistics that provide a picture of claimants’ journey through the PIP system.

3. Benefit combinations

Status: Experimental Statistics

Benefit combinations statistics form part of the DWP Benefits Statistical Summary, and show the number of people claiming at least one benefit, and the most common benefit combinations. These statistics are constructed by linking different benefit datasets, such as; PERS data (containing all legacy benefits), SHBE (housing benefit) data, PIP caseloads, and UC published data. The aim of the statistics is to show how many people and households claim DWP benefits, and to provide meaningful breakdowns of their characteristics.

Data is published on Stat-Xplore quarterly and is subject to a 6 month lag.

4. Housing Benefit debt recovery

Status: National Statistics

Housing Benefit debt recoveries is a bi-annual statistical publication capturing information on the amount of Housing Benefit that is overpaid to claimants, as well as the subsequent recoveries and amounts written off. The September publication is based on provisional data from quarters 1 and 2, while the March publication is based on finalised data from the full year. This means that statistics from Q1 and Q2 may be revised if quality assurance has identified that any local authorities (LAs) need to resubmit their data.

Data is submitted quarterly by LAs, who record both rent rebate and rent allowance data on the following measures for debt:

• outstanding at the start of the quarter
• identified during the quarter
• recovered during the quarter
• written off during the quarter

5. Housing Benefit speed of processing

Status: Official Statistics

HB speed of processing refers to how long it takes for local authorities to process a new HB claim, or a change of circumstances for a current claim. This publication is released quarterly and contains information on the average number of days that are taken to process new claims or change of circumstances for each month in the quarter.

Data is released by local authority or region.