How to cancel or close a Universal Credit claim

Use any one of three routes, and on a joint claim both of you have to ask and confirm. The first is the Request to close your claim option on your account homepage, the route DWP's own staff guidance points claimants to. The second is a message in your journal asking for the claim to be closed. Say why in the message, because the same guidance asks for a reason with a journal request. The third is a call to the Universal Credit helpline, for anyone who cannot use the online account. Any one of these ends a live claim. Before you pick one, check whether a change such as a new job, more hours or a move abroad is the real reason. If it is, DWP's advice is to report the change instead, and it closes the claim for you once it has checked whether it still owes you money.

It depends how far the application got. If you never submitted it, nothing has been claimed: a Universal Credit claim starts on the date you submit it, and an application not completed within 28 days of creating your account has to be started again from the beginning. You can simply leave it. If you did submit it and DWP has not decided it yet, you can withdraw it at any time before the decision. Regulation 31 of the Universal Credit Claims and Payments Regulations lets you do that in writing, by phone or in any other way DWP accepts, and the withdrawal counts from the moment DWP receives it. In practice that means a journal message or a call to the helpline. If you took a new claim advance while you waited, withdrawing the claim does not cancel it. An advance is a loan and still has to be paid back.

DWP closes the claim as withdrawn from the date you asked. Its staff guidance on claim closure sets out what follows: any outstanding appointments are cancelled, you get a decision telling you the claim has closed along with your appeal rights, and a note is added to your journal. Payments of Universal Credit stop, including any housing costs paid straight to a landlord or mortgage lender. If you need Universal Credit again you make a new claim, and the guidance warns of a five week wait for the first payment. The exception is a claim made within six months of the old award ending, which keeps the old payment day if you kept meeting the basic conditions in between. If you were moved onto Universal Credit from a legacy benefit under Move to Universal Credit, closing the claim also ends your transitional protection, and it is not given back on a later claim. DWP will not close a claim that is suspended or being handled by a specialist team.

Do not count on it. A request to close takes effect from the date you make it, and the first consequence DWP's guidance lists is that Universal Credit payments stop. Reporting a change works differently. GOV.UK says that when you report a change, DWP checks whether it owes you any money before it closes the claim, and that if you tell it straight away it will make sure you get paid the right amount. So if a payment is due soon, or you are part way through a month you may still be entitled for, report the change rather than asking for closure, and ask in your journal whether a final payment is due. Your assessment period and payment date show which month a payment covers.

DWP's own advice is to report the change rather than close the claim yourself. If you get a job, start working more hours, recover from a health condition or leave the country, report it in your online account. DWP then works out whether you are still entitled, checks whether it owes you anything for the period you have already been through, and closes the claim at the right point if entitlement has ended. You get a text or an email when that happens. Closing it yourself skips those checks. It is the difference between a claim that ends tidily with any final payment made and a claim you have switched off in the middle of an assessment period. Reporting also keeps the record straight, because the date you told DWP is what decides, later, whether any overpayment was avoidable.

Yes. You can voluntarily stop Universal Credit whenever you choose. An application can be withdrawn at any point before it is decided, and a live claim with no other closure reason is closed as withdrawn from the day you ask. You do not need a qualifying reason, but a journal request should still say why in a line, because DWP's guidance asks for one. There are limits. DWP does not close a claim that is suspended or sitting with a specialist team. A joint claim closes only when both partners have asked and confirmed, although a partner who is not eligible for Universal Credit does not need to agree. And stopping does not end a debt: money owed for an advance or an overpayment is still recovered after the claim ends.

Yes. GOV.UK uses the two words for the same thing. Its guidance tells you how to close your claim, then says that if DWP decides you are no longer entitled it will close your account at the right time and send you a text or an email. People also call it signing off or coming off Universal Credit. GOV.UK does not describe a separate way to delete the account: the routes it gives are the Request to close your claim option, a journal message and the helpline. Whichever word you use, ask once, through one route, and keep the journal record of the date you asked.

If your earnings in an assessment period rise above the point where an award is payable, you get nothing that month, but the claim itself stays live. If your wages fall back far enough for you to be entitled again within five months, the payments restart automatically with no new application. After five months you have to apply again from the beginning, and DWP's staff guidance says the service closes the claim itself after six assessment periods in a row with a nil award. That five month window is the reason not to close a claim the first time a bonus, a busy month or a fourth payday in a period wipes out an award. Leave it alone and it heals itself. Close it and you have thrown the window away. There is one caveat. Earnings a long way above your limit can be carried into the following period as surplus earnings, which delays the restart until they are used up. That is a delay rather than a closure, and the window still runs.

Yes, but a new claim is assessed on your circumstances at the time, and it restarts most of the process. A fresh claim starts a fresh assessment period from the day you claim, so the first payment is roughly five weeks away again: one month of assessment, then 7 days. The exception is a claim made within six months of the old award ending, as long as you kept meeting the basic conditions for Universal Credit in between: its assessment periods begin on the same day of each month as the old award's. If you and a partner both had awards, the day kept is the one whose assessment period ends earlier. You verify your identity again, agree a claimant commitment again, and evidence your rent and childcare again. If you need money in the meantime it comes as an advance, repaid over up to 24 months out of the payments that follow, an amount the advance payment calculator works out for you. And there is no transitional protection on a claim you make voluntarily, so if your circumstances have changed in the gap the new award simply reflects them. Almost none of that applies if the original claim was still open. The paperwork is the smaller cost. The real one is the gap, because a household that has just lost an income is rarely in a position to absorb five weeks of nothing.

Closing a claim is not the way to stop a deduction, pause a work search requirement, deal with a work coach you do not get on with or protest a decision you disagree with. None of those problems are solved by ending the claim, and a debt for an advance or an overpayment is still recovered whether you claim or not: from your Universal Credit while you claim, and by DWP Debt Management once you stop. If the reason you want out is the work search requirements, raise that with your work coach first. And if your earnings reach the Administrative Earnings Threshold, DWP cannot set a work search requirement at all. A commitment can be changed for health, caring or a temporary crisis without ending the claim.

Three checks. First, is there a payment still owed for the assessment period you are in, which reporting the change rather than closing would have secured? Second, is anything else attached to the claim that ends with it, for instance a payment going straight to a landlord or a third party deduction arrangement you rely on? Third, are you certain the income replacing it is stable? If a job is on probation, temporary or seasonal, the five month restart window is worth more than the tidiness of a closed claim. If you are unsure, a free welfare rights service will look at the numbers with you before you do anything irreversible. Whatever you decide, write it in the journal in your own words on the day you decide it, so the record shows what you asked for and when.