The DWP has been given an additional £90 million in the budget to “accelerate the move of employment and support allowance claimants onto universal credit”, but staff aren’t following the rules even with the current low number of migrations
The government finally officially confirmed in the Autumn budget document “Fixing the foundations to deliver change” that the managed migration of income-related employment and support allowance (irESA) claimants to universal credit (UC) began in September and will end in 2026. Until now, claimants have been left to hunt for clues that migration had begun.
So, it seems that the aim to send every irESA claimant a mandatory migration notice by December 2025 still stands. This means the final migrations will be completed around the end of April, given that some claimants will need an extension on the three month deadline.
To complete the process between now and April 2026 will mean completing over 10,000 ESA migrations every month.
In order to meet this target, the budget document also included the news that the DWP has been given an additional £90 million to “accelerate” mandatory migration.
“An additional £90 million is allocated to accelerate the move of Employment and Support Allowance claimants onto Universal Credit, which will now start from September 2024 instead of 2028. This will allow DWP to complete the rollout of Universal Credit in 2026, with all working age benefit claimants brought onto one system, enabling the decommissioning of the remaining legacy benefits.”
There is no indication of how this money will be spent.
But one concern is that the cash may be used to take on and train additional staff to push migration through. New staff with no previous experience are unlikely to be able to do anything but follow scripts provided by the DWP. They will struggle to deal with the many individual issues that ESA claimant may need to raise as part of their migration process.
Posters on Rightsnet, the site for welfare rights workers are already discovering that the DWP is failing to add the transitional element to the first payment for some ESA migration claimants. Even more worryingly, there are reports of the DWP simply not responding to journal entries or giving “garbled/nonsensical replies”.
If the DWP is failing to keep up with their workload even with the low numbers in the test and learn phase, it does not bode well for the migration of 10,000 ESA claimants a week in the main phase, especially if they are being dealt with by newly recruited staff.
Meanwhile Benefits and Work readers in the ESA support group continue to report being required to provide sick notes, in spite of the head of the DWP’s UC team claiming over a fortnight ago “we have an existing process to catch these cases, not perfect works for most, but you will see cases when doesn’t. Given volumes going up we are developing a tactical fix, to catch all, as I write, with a full system fix due later.”
Whatever the fix is, it doesn’t seem to be working yet, according to these Benefits and Work posters:
“Transitioning from Esa (support group) to UC filled up the form a week ago went to job centre today for ID check and got an appointment with work coach on the 13th Nov to sign a commitment. Mentioned them that i can t work because of disabilities and they responded bring a no fit note or otherwise if you don’t commit they will stop paying me.” Alex
“I have had a message from my work coach today about interview next week also CV and job search I'm also from ESA support group” Jon
“Just had this happen to me this morning so I've copied and pasted all of the info and also told work coach that my uc application told me since I claim esa I don't require a fit note.” Adama
“This as happened to my partner he is in the esa support group twice in the last week he as been asked about what work he is looking for planning on doing he suffers from memory loss the dwp are totally useless in there response I have had everything from he as to look for work (been in the support group means nothing) to it a computer fault to we can't find his records even by the dwp standards it a mess we are now been threatened with sanctions if he does not prove he s looking fir work they do not know what they are doing.” Jason
We’ve updated our FAQs to help members deal with this issue. You can learn more about the updates here.
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