The Department for Work and Pensions has extended the deadline for the closure of two benefits to give vulnerable claimants more time to make the move to Universal Credit.
The DWP yesterday closed the Income Support and income-related Jobseeker’s Allowance benefits, two of six legacy benefits migrating to Universal Credit. This follows the closure of Child Tax Credit and Working Tax Credit in April 2025.
The department had been due to complete the managed migration of people from six legacy benefits to Universal Credit by the end of March 2026, nine years later than initially promised.
But it has now announced that the closure of Employment and Support Allowance and Housing Benefit will be pushed back “by the end of the summer so a limited number of hard to reach customers, or customers with significant barriers to claiming, can continue to be supported to make the move to Universal Credit”.
The DWP said extra support will be provided to help these claimants make the move, including a dedicated DWP telephone number, the Move to UC Helpline, and tailored help through the Enhanced Support Journey for customers who have not engaged with the DWP, including through home visits.
Sir Stephen Timms, the minister for social security and disability, said: "Our Move to Universal Credit campaign has been successful in moving over 1.9 million people from legacy benefits to the modern Universal Credit system.
"Vulnerable customers have been at the forefront of this campaign. In their interests, we are extending the deadline for income-related Employment Support Allowance claimants to move over.
"This government is committed to updating the welfare system so that it promotes opportunity, rather than stifling it – as part of our Plan for Change.
"The campaign means the number of people on Universal Credit has increased, particularly the number of people who receive the benefit with no requirement to look for work, as, since June last year, the focus has been on moving vulnerable people from Employment and Support Allowance."
SRO longevity and Test and Learn: Lessons from the 15-year programme
In a report on the 15-year transition to Universal Credit, published on Monday, the Institute for Government sets out a series of lessons that government can learn from the programme.
On what went wrong in the early days of the project, the report points to "new government syndrome", whereby the department acted too quickly in its desire to "demonstrate both its willingness to support the new government and its ability to move fast".
It says another issue was optimism bias, “such a common cause of failure in both public and private projects that it seems quite remarkable that it needs restating. But it does – endlessly". Nicholas Timmins, author of the IfG report, says this came alongside what the National Audit Office described as a “fortress” mentality as things started to go wrong, and a “good news” culture.
Other issues included an "overload" of work, with the department having 11 other major projects under way in addition to Universal Credit at a time when it was having to cut its headcount by 39,000, and a lack of in-house technical capability within DWP following largescale outsourcing of IT in the 1990s and early 2000s.
The report also mentions personality clashes between ministers, as well as departmental differences, with the Treasury being "somewhat burnt by the experience of tax credits" and thus "largely unbelieving that Universal Credit would deliver what was promised".
On what went well, the report notes the programme's "test and learn" approach which was built into its 2013 reset – and which the current Labour government has attempted to take on.
One part of this approach was the invovlement of claimants in the operational design, and John McGlynn, the programme board’s independent chair from 2021 to 2015, said this "paid huge dividends".
"There are some key lessons for government around that: engaging with organisations that are perhaps closer to the communities that are affected by policy decisions than a given department is," he said.
The report says the decision to bring the IT in-house when the programme was relaunched in 2013 – the first in-house system DWP had built in 20 years – also allowed for a "highly agile approach".
Neil Couling, who in September 2014 became the project’s sixth senior responsible owner and held the role for a decade, told the IfG: “For something like Universal Credit you need the ability to test and learn. You need the ability to make mistakes, you need the ability to quickly pull out. And if you’re in a contractual relationship and you’ve signed up for something, it’s very hard to pull out when you see a problem.”
Couling's long-term presence is also cited in the IfG report as key to the programme's recovery: “a classic if extreme example of something that the institute and others have repeatedly argued – that programmes are more likely to be successful if a good SRO stays the course”.
McGlynn said: “A leading indicator of a programme going awry is senior staff turnover. You need an SRO who has got longevity and is hands-on – and that is true of all sorts of programmes from HS2 to 40 new hospitals to submarine procurement."
On this topic, Iain Duncan Smith told the IfG that the civil service should do more to treat programme managers as vital assets. “Generally, the process in the civil service is that you go up to the top, become permanent secretary, and that is your great out,” he said. “Wonderful. But if you are a programme manager you are worth more because, if a programme goes wrong, everything crashes. I think you should value them and be prepared if necessary to pay them even more than permanent secretaries because they are far more valuable than anybody you can imagine.”
Timmins' paper also notes the "slow, slow, slow, fast" approach to rolling out the programme, which allowed for each extension of the programme to be thoroughly tested before being applied at scale and meant that when DWP finally was confident, it could go at pace.
On the programme's board, the report says, "the view of many of those involved is crystal clear that the board – and so the programme – worked best when the board had a chair independent of the civil service and ministers". It says this helped tackle the "good news" and "fortress" culture that had plagued the programme’s early days.
The report also says it was important that the board's membership went beyond DWP – with "genuinely senior officials" attending from HM Revenue and Customs, HM Treasury and the Cabinet Office, plus a representative from local government. It says this "raised the level of challenge, but also provided key parts of the rest of central government with a much greater month-by-month understanding of the programme than would otherwise have been the case".