Dear Department for Work and Pensions,

DWP have stated that: "It is not possible to identify how many households did not receive the Cost-of-Living payment because of the way their wages were paid during the qualifying month." https://questions-statements.parliament....

On 27/08/2021 the DWP issued a Touchbase newsletter which included the following: "Universal Credit has been improved with a new automatic process to ensure claimants receive more consistent benefit payments, even if their employer pays them early because of a bank holiday.
DWP has changed its processes so that the Universal Credit system now automatically identifies claimants who receive a second monthly salary payment in one benefit assessment period.
Staff will be able to move the second payment forward to the next assessment period in the system, ensuring the claimant’s benefits don’t fluctuate from one month to the next due to the system thinking a claimant has received increased wages in one month."

Please provide documents which include answers to any of the following questions in respect of claimants' assessment periods which ended during the period of one month ending with 25 May 2022:
1) how many people were automatically identified, by the UC system, as having received a second monthly salary payment during their assessment period;
2) how many people were identified by some other method as having received a second monthly salary payment during that assessment period e.g. by the claimant contacting DWP themselves;
3) how many of the people that were identified, for that assessment period, as having received a second monthly salary payment during their assessment period had their second payment reallocated to a different assessment period;
4) how many people, as a result of the reallocation of a second monthly salary payment, became entitled to an award of UC of at least 1p for an assessment period which ended during the period of one month ending with 25 May 2022?

Yours faithfully,

Owen Stevens

Dear Department for Work and Pensions,

Thank you. I would like to amend the request in the way that you suggest i.e. remove Q4 from the request.

Yours faithfully,

Owen Stevens