Over £20 billion remains unclaimed in means tested benefits
September 14, 2017 –
As several of us at entitledto are numbers nerds we always like to look at new government stats about benefits. In an ideal world everyone would claim everything they are entitled to – after all that’s what our company is named after – but in reality, there are millions of people who could claim but don’t.
Today’s official statistics on income-related benefits from the DWP show the latest picture. Its annually updated data was released this morning and it’s bound to make worrying reading for benefits advisors around the UK.
We’ve done some number crunching and the figures paint a picture of a country where some of our poorest families are not getting the help they are due – to the tune of over £20 billion a year.
Help us encourage everyone to check if they are entitled, now!
These figures show millions are missing out on £1000’s of support that is rightfully theirs and it needn’t be the case. Even for those with no knowledge of the benefits system – and let’s face it the complex rules and regulations are enough to put many off - our free tools help people quickly work out what they may be entitled to.
Encourage your users to carry out a quick benefit check today and they could soon have a boost in income – especially if Universal Credit is about to roll out in their area. But don’t get me started on Universal Credit today (aside from the fact there are very limited stats available about it at the moment) that’s a blog for another day!
Amounts of unclaimed means tested benefits
How we worked it out
Using the key data from today’s report about non-takeup of the main income-related benefits we have added the most recent data about tax credits takeup along with an estimation about current takeup of Council Tax Support (CTS).
The CTS estimations are based on the last available take-up statistics for support to pay Council Tax from the financial year 2019/10. We used the mid-point of the total amount of Council Tax Benefit unclaimed of between £1.70 billion and £2.42 billion. Using the Bank of England Inflation Calculator we then scaled this value to 2016 prices.
Sources:
