According to recent DWP data, around 91,000 households were still claiming one form of Tax Credit – either Child or Working – in December 2024
Tax Credit claimants have just over two weeks left to switch over to Universal Credit or risk losing their benefit payments altogether. The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) is currently working to scrap six legacy benefits and move everyone onto Universal Credit.
These benefits include: Working Tax Credit, Child Tax Credit, Income-based Jobseeker’s Allowance (JSA), Income support, Housing Benefit, and Income related Employment Support Allowance (ESA). The first legacy benefit to be axed is Tax Credits which will be closed for good in April this year.
According to recent DWP data, around 91,000 households were still claiming one form of Tax Credit—either Child or Working—in December 2024. However, this figure is now likely much lower. Over the last few years, those claiming have slowly been moved over through the DWP’s Managed Migration programme.
As part of the process, households claiming one of the old legacy benefits are being sent letters called “migration notices” through the post. Under the plan, all Tax Credit claimants should have received a Migration Notice by the end of last year. Although some may receive it a little later.
If your notice was sent to you between January 27 and April 5, your deadline date to claim will likely be April 5, so you will have a short period in which to make your new claim. Once you have received a managed migration notice, you have three months to claim Universal Credit. If you miss this deadline, your benefits will be stopped.
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If you have not yet acted or have not received a letter, then you do not have much time left to make a claim, as you will not receive Tax Credit payments from April 5.
Once you’ve made a claim for Universal Credit, it usually takes up to five weeks for your first Universal Credit payment to arrive. However, it is important to note that once you have made an application for Universal Credit, your Tax Credit payments will stop.
If you claim Universal Credit by the deadline or within one month of the deadline, then you may get an extra payment – which is called a transitional element. This is intended to ensure that you are not worse off on Universal Credit compared to Tax Credits, at the point of transfer, with circumstances unchanged.
This amount depends on your current Tax Credits award being as accurate as possible, and HMRC may contact some claimants directly to carry out a “pre-migration check”. The transitional protection lasts until there is no difference between the amount awarded under Universal Credit and what you received before under legacy benefits.
If you miss the deadline in your notice but make a claim for Universal Credit within one month of your noted deadline date on the migration notice – this is called a grace period – your claim for the new benefit will be backdated to the deadline date, and transitional protection will be applied.
If you receive a Migration Notice but don’t make your new claim by the final deadline, you will not be able to have transitional protection if you later claim Universal Credit. The DWP is working to send migration notices to all those claiming legacy benefits by the end of this year.
This means hundreds of thousands of managed migration notices will be sent over the next nine months. The benefits department is working to completely phase out all legacy benefits by the end of March 2026.
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