Dear Department for Work and Pensions,

DWP is committed to publishing UC Programme Board papers: http://data.parliament.uk/DepositedPaper...

The UC Programme Board provides advice and support to the SRO.

However, the decision making body that is accountable for the successful delivery of the Universal Credit Programme is the UC Programme Delivery Executive: https://www.gov.uk/government/publicatio...

I would like to request four sets of papers. Please provide:
1. the papers for the most recent meeting of the UC Programme Delivery Executive;
2. the papers for the meeting of the UC Programme Delivery Executive prior to 1/3/20; and
3. the papers for the meetings of the UC Programme Delivery Executive immediately (a) preceding and (b) following the decision (which may have been made by the Board or may have been made elsewhere) that UC managed migration would require legacy benefit claimants to submit a claim for UC (as opposed to being transferred to UC automatically). To narrow down the time period - we know from the SSAC report on draft managed migration regulations that this decision had already been made by 20/06/2018 (p.44 https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk...), it appears that a decision may possibly have already been made by 8/12/2017 (p.14 of this PDF refers to making a claim https://data.parliament.uk/DepositedPape...) or, if not, was under discussion around that time. It should not be particularly onerous to narrow down the time period as it is likely that a log of these decisions is kept by the Department and the leadership of the UC programme has been very stable over the period in question down to the present time.

Yours faithfully,

Owen Stevens

Dear Department for Work and Pensions,

Please pass this on to the person who conducts Freedom of Information reviews.

I am writing to request an internal review of Department for Work and Pensions's handling of my FOI request 'UC Programme Delivery Executive papers'.

Thankyou for your letter and the enclosed information provided outside of the Act which, although it does not answer the request, is appreciated.

The request has, according to the decision letter dated 18/04/2023, been refused on cost grounds under s.12. However, the letter states that the reason for refusing the request under s.12 is “is explained in the attached letter from Neil Couling – Senior Responsible Owner (SRO)”.

The letter from Neil Couling purports to provide the requested information and also states that the information cannot be provided for a variety of reasons:
a) “Providing papers would involve considerable expense and not provide the specific information you seek”;
b) “I have set out the requested information below”; and
c) “This wasn’t an issue discussed or explored in PDE, or in another forum. Accordingly, there are no papers to share” (while also going on to state that the issue had been discussed within Mr Couling’s top team)

I would like to challenge the decision to refuse the request.
1. I requested specific sets of papers from the UC Programme Delivery Executive. The information provided in response does not answer the request and the papers have not been provided. My request only partially relates to the decision to require new claims for UC as part of the managed migration process and even then only uses that issue as a means of establishing the dates of two of the four meetings for which papers have been requested.
2. The request has been refused on cost grounds but it is hard to see that there would be any difficulty in identifying the papers required, and no explanation has been provided as to why this would not be possible within the cost limits. My request of 22/03/2023 identified, at (1) and (2), specific meetings for which I had requested papers. I acknowledge that some time will be taken up locating the information requested at (3) but there doesn’t appear to be any difficulty identifying the broad time frame involved (Neil Couling’s letter suggests that a decision was made in 2018 – although he refers to ‘pre-population’).

A full history of my FOI request and all correspondence is available on the Internet at this address: https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/u...

Yours faithfully,

Owen Stevens