Guidance

Bereavement Support Payment statistics: background information and methodology

Updated 28 November 2024

Background

Bereavement Support Payment (BSP) was introduced in April 2017 and replaced:

• Bereavement Payment
• Bereavement Allowance
• Widowed Parent’s Allowance

BSP is payable to widows, widowers or surviving civil partners who are bereaved on or after 6 April 2017. It consists of an initial lump-sum followed by up to 18 monthly instalments.

A claimant is eligible if their partner either paid National Insurance contributions for at least 25 weeks or died due to an accident at work or disease caused by work. When they died, the claimant must have been under State Pension age and living in the UK or a country that pays bereavement benefits. BSP is tax-free and does not affect entitlement to other benefits or count towards the benefit cap.

There are 2 rates:

• higher
• standard

Claimants who are entitled to Child Benefit or who were pregnant when their husband, wife or civil partner died will get the higher rate. All other claimants will get the standard rate.

On 9th February 2023, Bereavement Support Payment eligibility was extended to unmarried cohabiting parents bereaved on or after 6th April 2017 who were living together on the date of death. Depending on the circumstances of the claim, newly eligible claimants may receive a backdated lump sum payment back to 30 August 2018 (the date that eligibility was extended back to). For more information on the extension of Bereavement Benefits eligibility, see the Department’s press release. BSP replaces Bereavement Payment, Bereavement Allowance and Widowed Parent’s Allowance from 6th April 2017. Consequently, four new decision reasons were added to the claims received dataset in the August 2023 release (reflecting data from February 2023 onwards).

Purpose of the statistics

Latest statistics and a full back-series to April 2017 are available on Stat-Xplore. This platform replaces the quarterly ODS tables which, historically, remain available as data tables in the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) benefits statistical summaries.

Data on Stat-Xplore may not match previously published ODS data tables due to improvements in data sources, methodology and rounding policy.

The BSP statistics show how many claims have been received by the department each month and how many people are receiving BSP at the end of each month. All claims include Great Britain (GB) claims and a small number which are made in European Union (EU) and European Economic Area (EEA) countries, or countries with which we have a reciprocal agreement.

The statistics will be used in the department’s evaluation of the benefit. They will also be used to answer Parliamentary Questions and requests under the Freedom of Information Act.

Source of the statistics

BSP claims made in GB are predominantly processed via the Claim Manager (CM) service which determines eligibility and entitlement. A feed of CM data is made available to create analytic datasets from which the statistics are derived. In addition, data on abroad cases is collated clerically via a Tracker as are a small proportion of clerical GB cases.

Definitions and coverage of the statistics

The BSP statistics contain 2 measures:

• Claims Received
• Claims in Payment

Claims Received

Claims Received measure refers to the total number of claims made to Bereavement Support Payment and received by the department, up to the reference date (the last day of the reporting month). Claims that do not progress to the individual receiving BSP will be included. There are many reasons why they may not receive BSP; for example, the individual’s spouse may not have paid enough National Insurance Contributions. Only claims that have been cleared and with a valid National Insurance Number have been included in this measure.

Data available on Stat-Xplore provides more granular breakdowns of the statistics including: allowed and disallowed claims and reasons for disallowance. This reflects the initial decision recorded at the time the claim is cleared and therefore does not include any retrospective adjustments to the higher rate (claims showing decisions with a standard rate may later change to higher rate, for example for a claimant awaiting Child Benefit eligibility, in which case they will receive backdated higher payments to when they became eligible for Child Benefit).

Claims in Payment

Claims in Payment measure refers to the number of people who are in receipt of Bereavement Support Payment at a specific point in time (the last day of the reporting month).

Data available on Stat-Xplore provides more granular breakdowns of the statistics including Payment rate for Allowed claims. This rate represents the payment rate at the time of the reference date and includes backdating of Higher rate.

A small number of claims are started on Claim Manager but are then paid manually. Such claims are not included. Statistics are also available by Residency based geographies derived from address information as recorded on the Customer Information System (CIS). CIS is a more reliable source of addresses as it links to all of the DWP benefit systems and contains the most up to date address for each individual. All higher level geographies (Lower Layer Super Output Area and Data Zone, Middle Layer Super Output Area and Intermediate Zone, Local Authority, Region, Country) are derived from Census Output Area (COA).

Statistics are also available by Age (individual age and bands) and Gender.

Data Confidentiality

Statistics are subject to Introduced Random Error to ensure that no data is released which could risk the identification of individuals.

All Bereavement Support Payment statistics in this release are badged as Official Statistics. Official Statistics are produced in accordance with Statistics and Registration Service Act 2007 and the UK Statistics Authority Code of Practice for Statistics and meet high standards of trustworthiness, quality and public value.

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