In August 2011 we requested your views on the statistics we produce, their frequency and format. Here is a note summarising the feedback  we received. If you have any queries regarding this, please contact Department of Work and Pensions, Information Directorate Client Statistics division by emailing Joanna Lone.

The DWP Chief Statistician has decided to delay statistics on Jobcentre Plus JSA sanctions related to the Work Programme. Delaying the publication will enable DWP to make a coordinated release of Work Programme statistics and undertake additional quality assurance work, on JSA sanctions related to the Work Programme, as part of that release.

We have discussed the delay in publication with all our key stakeholders and they have raised no major issues.

In accordance with the Code of Practice for Official Statistics, the postponement of the publication is being announced on the National Statistics Publication Hub and also on the DWP statistics web page.

The DWP Chief Statistician has decided to reschedule the publication of the next set of Fraud and Error estimates from November 2011 to February 2012.

Delaying the publication will enable the Fraud and Error Measurement team to conduct vital development work on the validation and processing of the fraud and error data.

The developments are designed to make future processing quicker and will also improve quality assurance. In addition, it will help to ensure that the Fraud and Error measurement system is more robust in preparation for the advent of Universal Credit.

We have discussed the delay in publication with all our key stakeholders and they have raised no major issues.

In accordance with the Code of Practice for Official Statistics, the postponement of the publication is being announced on the National Statistics Publication Hub and also on the DWP statistics web page.

We are seeking your views on the statistics we produce, their frequency and format. Please see the Request for user views note for more details. If you have any comments, please contact Department of Work and Pensions, Information Directorate Client Statistics division by emailing Joanna Lone

Referrals to the new employment programme Work Programme began from June 2011. In the run up to that launch, a new package of Get Britain Working support measures were introduced. In tandem with these changes, referrals to legacy employment programmes have now ceased. Hence, the statistics series will be ceasing over the next few quarters. Statistics will largely be released in August as usual¹; no legacy programme statistics will be released in November 2011; then final statistics for most programmes will be released in February 2012. For details of the individual programmes, see the Changes To Employment Programme Statistics note.

¹ New Deal for Young People and New Deal 25 Plus statistics have already ceased. Flexible New Deal will have a final release in August 2011. New Deal for Lone Parents will not be released in August 2011.

For Q1 2011/12 onwards, we will no longer publish a combined average time to process new claims and changes of circumstance as the Right Time Indicator (RTI). We will still be publishing average speed of processing for both new claims and changes of circumstances. The publication will be renamed “Housing Benefit / Council Tax Benefit Speed of Processing” to reflect this change.

Further details of this change are set out in Housing Benefit / Council Tax Benefit Circular A18 of October 2010 http://www.dwp.gov.uk/docs/a18-2010.pdf

If you have any comments or questions on this change, or any general queries regarding this publication, please email : Performance.Framework@dwp.gsi.gov.uk

Previously published Out-of-Work benefit statistics have been uploaded into Google Public Data Explorer; a web-based tool designed to visualise data.

For full details please visit:

Data Visualisation: Out-of-Work benefit statistics

For general enquiries regarding this release, please contact Mike Payne from the Department for Work and Pensions, Information Directorate Client Statistics division by emailing - Mike Payne

This is to announce that a revision to the National Statistic 'Fraud and Error in the Benefits System: Preliminary 2010/11 Estimates' is due to be published at 9:30am on Tuesday 12 July 2011.

• The release will updated to include preliminary 2010/11 Housing Benefit estimates and revised overall totals.

If you have any comments or questions on this, or any general queries regarding this publication, please email Nick Herbert from the Department for Work and Pensions, Information Directorate Fraud and Error Measurement Team at nick.herbert@dwp.gsi.gov.uk

The latest national statistics on Fraud and Error in the Benefit System, the preliminary 2010/11 estimates (October 2009 to September 2010 data), produced by the Department for Work and Pensions were released on 16th June 2011 according to the arrangements approved by the UK Statistics Authority. These estimate fraud and error levels in the benefit system in Great Britain.

For full details please visit http://statistics.dwp.gov.uk/asd/asd2/index.php?page=fraud_error

For general queries regarding this publication, please email Joanne Dalzell from the Department for Work and Pensions, Information Directorate Fraud and Error Measurement Team at joanne.dalzell@dwp.gsi.gov.uk

This is to announce that the next publication of National Statistic 'Fraud and Error in the Benefits System: October 2009 to September 2010 (Preliminary 2010/11 Report)' is due to be published at 9:30am on Thursday 16 June 2011.

Update:

Preliminary estimates of the levels of Fraud and Error in the Benefit System in Great Britain for 2010/11 will be published in a National Statistics first release on Thursday 16th June at 9.30am.

• The release will include an estimate of total overpayments and underpayments across the benefit system as well as individual estimates for Income Support, Jobseeker’s Allowance, Pension Credit and Incapacity Benefit.
• We will only be releasing a set of headline numbers. The full report will follow later on.
• New estimates for most of the main benefits will be published, except for Housing Benefit which will follow in the full report.
• The total overpayments and underpayments will use the most up-to-date figures for each benefit.

If you have any comments or questions on this, or any general queries regarding this publication, please email Joanne Dalzell from the Department for Work and Pensions, Information Directorate Fraud and Error Measurement Team at joanne.dalzell@dwp.gsi.gov.uk

This is to announce that the next publication of National Statistic 'Fraud and Error in the Benefits System: October 2009 to September 2010 (Preliminary 2010/11 Report)' is due to be published at 9:30am on Thursday 16 June 2011.

Important notes:

• 1) We will be releasing a set of headline numbers in time to be included in the DWP resource account. It may not be possible to produce all of the detailed tables by this date, in which case they will follow as soon as possible.
• 2) We would like to provide advanced warning to users that section 6 tables will not be provided in this report.

The full publication would usually include 'Section 6 - Detailed estimates for continuously measured benefits', which provides error code breakdowns for Hosuing Benefit, Income Support, Jobseeker's Allowance and Pension Credit.

A new error code framework was introduced in April 2010 following internal stakeholder consultation and agreement. Therefore, for this report the October 2009 – March 2010 data is based on a different error code framework to the April 2010 – September 2010 data and hence it is not possible to combine the two six month periods of data to provide detailed error breakdowns.

Error code breakdowns (based on 12 months of the new framework) will be reported again within the 2010/11 full year report (April 2010 to March 2011) which is due to be published in Autumn 2011.

If you have any comments or questions on this, or any general queries regarding this publication, please email Joanne Dalzell from the Department for Work and Pensions, Information Directorate Fraud and Error Measurement Team at joanne.dalzell@dwp.gsi.gov.uk

The latest national statistics on Households Below Average Income (HBAI) produced by the Department for Work and Pensions will be released on 12 May 2011 according to the arrangements approved by the UK Statistics Authority.

Statistics and commentary give an insight into the standard of living of the household population in the United Kingdom, focusing on the lower part of income distribution, for the period up to the end of 2009/10. The latest release updates the statistics previously released on 20 May 2010.

Published date: 12 May 2011

For further information or feedback, please email Peter Matejic

This dataset contains statistics relating to Housing Benefit fraud volumes and amounts of incorrectly overpaid benefit. It is aggregate level data and is received on a quarterly basis from each Local Authority. Due to an unforeseen quality issue, overpayment figures will not form part of this first publication but will be made available as soon as possible thereafter.

Published date: 11th May 2011

For further information or feedback, please email Ann Simpson-Hawkins

A further table will be added to the supplementary excel tables for "Fraud and Error in the Benefit System: April 2009 to March 2010".

This is entitled "Table 8 - Estimates for Housing Benefit Fraud and Error overpayments by the component of the HB assessment that was incorrect, split by year" and will be released at 9.30 am on 13 April.

For further information or feedback on the content of the tables, please email Nick Herbert

The expenditure tables consistent with the March 2011 Budget will be published on 21st April 2011. Expenditure tables will contain real terms and nominal terms expenditure for the period 1948-49 to 2015-16 and caseload tables will contain figures from 1991-92 to 2015-16. For further information or feedback on the content of the tables, please email expenditure.tables@dwp.gsi.gov.uk

This document describes planned changes to the Family Resources Survey from April 2011. (19KB) 

This technical note describes a new material deprivation indicator for pensioners (39KB)  which will be introduced in HBAI 1994/95-2009/10 due to be released in May 2011.

Due to unforeseen technical problems, three statistical publications which have already been pre-announced will be delayed. The affected publications are:

• Child Support Agency (CSA) Quarterly Summary of Statistics, due for release on 26 January 2011
• DWP Quarterly Statistical Summary, due for release on 16 February 2011
• Census Output Area Data on workless benefit claimants, due for release on 24 February 2011

The key underlying issues have now been resolved and we are confident of releasing these publications within one month of the originally announced date. The revised dates are:

• 9 February 2011 - CSA Quarterly Summary of Statistics
• 16 March 2011 - DWP Quarterly Statistical Summary
• 24 March 2011 - Census Output Area Data on workless benefit claimants

For subsequent releases, we will resume the usual pattern.

In place of the delayed DWP February statistical release (16 February) we plan to publish only our usual monthly release. This will contain early estimates for inactive benefits; Housing Benefit and Council Tax Benefit statistics; and a link to the Delivery Directorate Performance Report (containing Flexible New Deal statistics). We will also release statistics for Winter Fuel Payments for households for winter 2009/10 by 2010 Parliamentary Constituencies.

If you would like to receive occasional e-mails from DWP to directly inform you of similar such issues with these publications, please email general.statistics@dwp.gsi.gov.uk giving details of the DWP publications you use.

We previously announced that the next set of National Statistics on Fraud and Error in the Benefit System - April 2009 to March 2010 would be published in November 2010.

After doing our usual quality assurance checks, we identified some unexpected patterns that needed further investigation. We therefore needed to carry out some further quality assurance checks to ensure the results are correct, which resulted in a delay to this publication and some revisions to previously published data for 2008/2009. The Housing Benefit and global estimates section of the 2008/2009 report will be revised. (The Housing Benefit revision has had a slight affect on the global estimate for 2008/2009.)

We will now be publishing the figures on 29th March.

On this date we will publish:

• Revised National Statistics on Fraud and Error in the Benefit System - April 2008 to March 2009
• National Statistics on Fraud and Error in the Benefit System - April 2009 to March 2010. Note that this report will replace the preliminary estimates for 2009/10 which were entitled National Statistics on Fraud and Error in the Benefit System - October 2008 to September 2009.

In the meantime if you have any queries please contact Nick Herbert (nick.herbert@dwp.gsi.gov.uk)

This National Statistics series provides estimates of the numbers who are entitled to but not receiving the six main income-related benefits and the amounts of benefit which are unclaimed. The results for 2008-09 were published in June 2010 and provisional dates of May/June have been pre announced for the 2009-10 results.

Since the last publication we have been investigating alternative ways of producing these estimates. The new method will be less resource intensive in the long term and more transparent to users. However some additional time is required to introduce the new approach. Therefore the results for 2009-10 will not be available in May/June 2011.

Our intention at the moment is to publish a technical note explaining our new approach in summer 2011 and to publish the results for 2009-10 thereafter. We will specify a window of publication as soon as we have completed our investigation into new methods of providing these estimates.