Universal Credit claim review: what happens and how to prepare

A check that the details on your claim are up to date and that you are getting the right amount. DWP can review a claim at any time while you are on Universal Credit, and most claims are expected to be reviewed at some point, some more than once. The review is run by a claim review agent, who contacts you through the journal in your online account, asks for documents and books a telephone appointment. DWP's Targeted Case Review programme, which started in 2022, had completed 1,149,940 reviews by the end of March 2025. Turn2us calls the same process an automated claimant review. Being picked does not mean you have done anything wrong. A claim review is not the same as a Work Capability Assessment, which looks at a health condition, and it is not a suspension, though it can lead to one if the review is not answered.

The journal message says exactly what is wanted, and that message is the list to work from. It usually starts with proof of identity and bank statements, because the transactions show whether your income, savings and outgoings match what is on the claim. Depending on your circumstances you may also be asked for documents about housing costs, earnings or other income, self-employment, savings, childcare costs, children, student finance or caring responsibilities. Every statement and document has to be sent without changes or edits. Do not black out transactions, crop pages or annotate them, even ones you think are private: an edited statement cannot be checked, and Nottingham City Council's housing service, setting out DWP's answer, says redacting transaction descriptions stops DWP working out whether you have other income. DWP does not publish a fixed number of months of statements for every review, so send the period the request names, for every account it names. If you cannot get a document in the format asked for, or do not understand the request, ask the claim review agent in your journal.

Fourteen days. Regulation 45 of the Decisions and Appeals Regulations 2013 gives you 14 days from the date DWP tells you what it needs, or a longer period if the request itself allows one. You can also get more time by showing DWP that you need it, for example because a bank is slow to send old statements. If a document does not exist, or you genuinely cannot get it, you meet the requirement by saying so within the same period and explaining why. The practical rule is to write in your journal before the deadline, not after it: list what you have sent, what is still coming and when you expect it. A dated journal message is your record that you asked. Send everything you can in one go, because evidence arriving in pieces is harder to check and slower to clear.

GOV.UK says only that the appointment is to discuss your claim, and DWP does not publish a script, so there is no fixed list of questions to learn. The sensible preparation is the request itself: be ready to talk through each thing it covered, such as who lives with you, your housing costs, your income and savings, and any transaction in your statements that does not match what is on the claim. Have your statements and the documents you sent in front of you, and answer from them rather than from memory. If you cannot make the time, say so in your journal before the appointment, because a missed appointment is one of the three things that stops a payment during a review. If you need support to take part, for example because of a health condition, a disability or difficulty with English, tell the agent in your journal in advance.

Work from the request, in order. On the day it arrives, read the journal message and write down every document, account and period it names, and the date 14 days on. Gather the statements as downloads or originals, not screenshots or edited copies, and send them together. If anything will be late or does not exist, say so in your journal before the deadline, naming the document and the reason. Before the phone appointment, have the same documents open and check anything in your statements that a stranger would ask about, such as transfers from family, cash deposits or payments to a partner. After the outcome, compare the new amount with your last statement, and if you disagree, ask for a reconsideration within a month. Keep copies of everything you sent and screenshots of the journal messages, because they are your record if the decision is challenged later.

Not if you take part. GOV.UK says a payment is stopped during a review only if you do not provide the documents, do not attend the phone appointment, or are not eligible for Universal Credit. If a payment is suspended, it is paid again once DWP is satisfied it is properly payable and the evidence has been supplied. The hard edge is regulation 47: once more than a month has passed since the first payment was suspended for missing evidence, DWP must decide that you stopped being entitled from the date of the suspension. At that point there is no payment left to restart: you would need to make a new claim, and can challenge the decision that ended the old one. That is why a review request should be answered the week it arrives. Getting a held payment moving again, and where money can come from in the meantime, is covered in the guide to a suspended Universal Credit payment.

You get a message in your journal with the outcome, and there are three. Nothing changes. You were underpaid, in which case future payments go up and you get an extra payment to make up what you missed. Or you were overpaid, in which case future payments are corrected and the overpayment is usually recovered by deductions from later payments, explained in the guide to Universal Credit overpayments. The 21% of targeted reviews that found a claim wrong includes both directions. If the review finds something DWP thinks may be fraud, the agent can refer it to a fraud team instead of simply correcting the claim. If you disagree with a decision made during the review, ask for a mandatory reconsideration within one month of the decision, in your journal so it is dated.

The process is the same in practice. nidirect describes the same steps: a message in your online account, a request for ID and bank statements and any documents about your circumstances, and a phone appointment. Universal Credit in Northern Ireland is run by the Department for Communities rather than DWP, under Northern Ireland's own regulations, so read the deadline in your journal message rather than assuming the Great Britain figures above apply word for word.