Universal Credit

(asked on 25th February 2019) - View Source

Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, pursuant to the Answer of 20 February 2019 to Question 221994, whether it was the research contractor or the Department who made the decision to report without differentiating between live and full service; for what purpose live service was included as a separate sample to full service in the claimant survey at the beginning of the 2017-18 year; whether live service and full service have been reported separately internally for 2017-18; what the total cost was of the claimant survey research conducted for 2017-18; what plans he has to compare the full service findings of the 2018-19 claimant survey with the full service findings from the 2017-18 survey; and what questions within the survey questionnaire have not been reported within the annual report and data tables.


Answered by
Alok Sharma Portrait
Alok Sharma
COP26 President (Cabinet Office)
This question was answered on 25th March 2019

The Department has made the decision not to differentiate between Live and Full service for a number of Universal Credit data sets, including the claimant survey. This is because both services operate within the same policy framework and live service is being phased out.

For the 2017/18 survey year, the cost was £382,435.26 across all main benefits.

We track trends in claimant satisfaction, although individual year results are not always comparable; where this is the case we point that out for users of the survey.

The questions within the survey questionnaire that have not been reported within the annual report and data tables are listed in the table in the document attached:

Reticulating Splines