Households claiming Housing Benefit will need to put in a claim for Universal Credit or risk having their benefits stopped.

The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) is currently working on its "Managed Migration" program which sees it move over those claiming older legacy benefits onto Universal Credit. Those claiming Housing Benefit only - and no other benefit - will have received a letter called a "Migration Notice" over the last few weeks.

Once this letter arrives, claimants will need to put in a claim for Universal Credit within three months. If they don't, they will have their claim terminated. In an update to its plans published earlier this year, the DWP sent Migration notices to Housing Benefits claimants from July. This means they will have put a claim for Universal Credit in the next few weeks to keep their payments.

The DWP has been phasing out the legacy benefits for a few years and restarted the move again last year after briefly pausing during the Coronavirus pandemic. At the time of the managed migration restarting, around 2.6million people were still claiming old-style legacy benefits in the UK. The benefits being scrapped by the DWP include:

  • Working Tax Credit
  • Child Tax Credit
  • Income-based Jobseeker's Allowance (JSA)
  • Income support
  • Housing Benefit
  • Income related Employment Support Allowance (ESA)

As part of the DWP's plan, from July people claiming Employment Support Allowance (ESA) with Child Tax Credits were sent migration notices and those claiming Jobseekers Allowance (JSA) will start to receive them in September. Originally, the process was set to be completed by 2028. However, the former Tory Government changed the plans earlier this year. Now, all migration notices will be sent by the end of December 2025.

You can put in your claim for Universal Credit online, or over the phone by calling the Universal Credit Migration Notice helpline on 0800 169 0328, or you can also ask your local Job Centre. Once you have made your claim, you will have to wait five weeks until your first Universal Credit payment and you will continue to receive it going forward - unless your circumstances change.