DWP claimants told to act after 355,000 have benefits payments stopped
Currently, the benefits department is working to move people claiming older "legacy benefits" onto Universal Credit through a process called Managed Migration
The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) is currently sending letters to hundreds and thousands of benefit claimants urging them to act or risk losing their payments.
Currently, the benefits department is working to move people claiming older "legacy benefits" onto Universal Credit through a process called Managed Migration.
Under the plan, the DWP sends letters called "migration notices" to households claiming certain benefits, asking them to move to Universal Credit. Recently, the department started ramping up the process and is sending more migration notices out, with the aim of transferring everyone over by March next year.
The benefits included in this shake-up are Income-based Jobseeker's Allowance (JSA), Income Support, Housing Benefit, and Income-related Employment and Support Allowance (ESA). The Government initially planned to transfer all ESA claimants to Universal Credit by the end of 2028. However, this deadline has since been brought forward significantly to September 2025 for ESA claimants.
The DWP has already sent 200,000 ESA claimants their migration notices, but a further 400,000 still need to make the switch. In February, 60,000 letters a month were sent to clients. The department is now aiming to increase this to 83,000 a month.
The final round of migration notices for all legacy benefits is set to be sent in September this year.
The new timeline means claimants must be vigilant about checking their post. Once you receive a migration notice, you have three months to submit a claim for Universal Credit. If you don't, your current claim will be stopped.
Your managed migration notice will give you an exact date for when your claim will end. Once the deadline has passed, there is no option to return to your previous benefits once they've been stopped.
Once you've made a claim for Universal Credit, your first payment usually arrives in up to five weeks.
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Between July 2022 and December 2024, the DWP sent almost 1.6 million migration notices. According to the latest figures, 355,940 individuals have already lost their benefits after failing to act on these notices.
Around 1.1 million people have successfully claimed Universal Credit, with another 174,576 still in the process of moving over.
If you claim Universal Credit by the deadline or within one month of the deadline, then you may get an extra payment - which is called a transitional element. This is intended to ensure that you are not worse off on Universal Credit compared to your older legacy benefit, at the point of transfer, with circumstances unchanged.
If you miss your deadline day, there is also a Final Deadline Day. This is the day that would have been the last day of your monthly Universal Credit "assessment period" if you had claimed the benefit on your original deadline day.
If you fail to claim Universal Credit by the final deadline day, your legacy benefits will have already ended, and you will have missed out on the opportunity to receive the transitional protection payment.
You can still make a Universal Credit claim, but you would be treated as a new claimant. The first legacy benefit to be scrapped completely was Tax Credits, which stopped in April of this year.
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