Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many people are currently in receipt of an advance payment of universal credit.

Advances are available to support those in immediate financial need until their first Universal Credit payment is made.

If an advance of benefit entitlement is taken, this means that a claimant can receive 13 payments over the course of a year instead of 12. As of October 2021 the period over which you have to repay an advance also doubles from 12 months to 24 months

The department published a set of supplementary management information on the number of Universal Credit Advances paid by the four advance types. It is available at https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/universal-credit-declarations-claims-and-advances-management-information.