Title

Benefit claimants by GB country/English region and statistical group

Last update

18 May 2016 18 May 2016

Next update

August 2016

Publishing organisation

Welsh Government

Contact email

economic.stats@wales.gsi.gov.uk

Designation

National Statistics

Lowest level of geographical disaggregation

GB regions

Geographical coverage

GB regions

Languages covered

English only

General description

This dataset provides a quarterly snapshot of benefit claimants at particular points in time and are based on 100% of claimants so is not subject to any sampling error.

Data collection and calculation

Data are for the number of people aged 16 to 64 who are claiming one or more key DWP benefits and the combination of benefits they are claiming.

The aim of the Statistical Group typology is to present each person by the main reasons why they are claiming benefit. Each client is classified just once. Benefits are arranged hierarchically and claimants are assigned to the top most benefit which they receive. Thus a person who is a lone parent and receives Incapacity Benefit would be classified as incapacity benefits.
For this reason the group lone parent, for example, will not contain all lone parents claiming Income Support. Some will be included in the incapacity benefits group instead.
Data are not seasonally adjusted so any comparisons should be made year on year.

Frequency of publication

Quarterly

Data reference periods

1999 to 2015

Rounding applied

Data are rounded to the nearest 10.

Revisions information

Although DWP do perform extensive quality assurance on raw data and statistical tables prior to publication, occasionally an error slips through. In the rare case when an error occurs, we thoroughly investigate how it occurred and strengthen our processes where necessary. Any erroneous statistics are removed and revised as soon as possible. Great care is taken to ensure all users are informed and are fully aware of the error and any implications. For further information see the DWP Policy Statement on Revisions:
http://research.dwp.gov.uk/asd/policy/DWP_Revisions_Policy_final.pdf

Statistical quality

Difficulties exist in the ability of the WPLS data to identify flows claims of short duration. These short duration cases affect the numbers starting a new claim (on-flow) or ending a benefit claim (off-flow) with reference to a certain time period. Flows are currently reported for Bereavement Benefit/Widows Benefit (6 weekly scan), Incapacity Benefit/Severe Disability Allowance (6 weekly scan), Income Support (weekly scan), Pension Credit (weekly scan), State Pension (6 weekly scan) and Employment and Support Allowance (2 weekly scan). Claims which both start and end between two consecutive extract dates will not be detected. Previously for the 5% sample data, because there is a 3 month gap between extracts, some claims with a duration from one day up to almost 3 months were missed and so the use of WPLS data offers much improvement in this respect.

Keywords

Benefits

Name

ECON0068