How will moving from my current benefits to Universal Credit affect me?
Universal Credit Migration
There are very limited circumstances whereby someone can make a new claim for legacy benefits. Eventually, all existing claimants of legacy benefits will have to claim Universal Credit (UC), even if there has been no change of circumstances. We call this move from legacy benefits to UC “migrating”. The term legacy benefit means:
- Income related employment and support allowance (IR-ESA)
- Income based job seekers allowance (IB-JSA)
- Income support (IS)
- Child tax credit (CTC)
- Working tax credit (WTC)
- Housing benefit for working age claimants (HB)
Please note that Housing benefit can still be claimed by people over state pension age. The rules for mixed age couples (where one is over state pension and the other is under state pension age) are more complicated and it may be worth seeking advice as to whether you can make a new claim for Housing benefit if this applies to you.
There are three different ways in which a legacy benefit claimant will claim UC. They are known as managed migration, natural migration and voluntary migration. Whichever method is used, it's not possible to return to legacy benefits. If you are currently in receipt of UC with some form of transitional protection, certain changes of circumstances can erode this protection very quickly and others can cause it to end. Further information about each type of migration and transitional protection can be found in the options below.
