Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many alternative payment arrangements for fortnightly payment of universal credit were (a) requested, (b) rejected and (c) accepted in the most recent 12 month period for which figures are available.

The Department is unable to provide data relating to (a) requested and (b) rejected alternative payment arrangements for fortnightly payment of Universal Credit as the information is not readily available, and to provide it would incur disproportionate cost.

In response to part (c), the available information on the number of households on Universal Credit that receive More Frequent Payments or Scottish Choices More Frequent Payments is published and can be found at:

https://stat-xplore.dwp.gov.uk/

Guidance on how to extract the information required can be found at:

https://stat-xplore.dwp.gov.uk/webapi/online-help/Getting-Started.html

Notes:

1. Statistics are based on whether a household has actually been paid a More Frequent Payment.
2. Data will not include households that had a More Frequent Payment set up but were not actually paid more frequently, for instance because they cancelled the More Frequent Payment before they were paid.