The Universal Credit migration timetable: who moves, and when

Managed migration is the process DWP uses to move the people still on a legacy benefit onto Universal Credit. It is not automatic, and it is not a transfer. Nothing happens to your claim until a letter called a migration notice arrives, and when it does, you have to make a new Universal Credit claim yourself. There is no switch DWP flips at their end and no file that moves across on your behalf. That is the most misunderstood part of it: people wait for a change that never comes, or read the letter as an offer they can decline. It is neither. It is notice that a benefit is being closed, with a date attached, and claiming before that date is the only thing that keeps money coming.

The order was set by benefit, not by household. Working Tax Credit and Child Tax Credit went first, followed by Income Support and income-based Jobseeker's Allowance, and all four have now ended and been replaced. Income-related Employment and Support Allowance and Housing Benefit are the two still working through. Housing Benefit is the awkward one: if you live in supported or temporary accommodation, it stays with your local council and carries on, and Universal Credit will not add a housing element on top. Benefits outside the six are untouched. Personal Independence Payment, Carer's Allowance, Child Benefit, New Style JSA and New Style ESA all continue exactly as they are, whether or not you also claim Universal Credit. Council Tax Reduction is separate too, run by your council rather than DWP, so check with them about what a move to Universal Credit means for yours.

DWP publishes which benefits are being migrated and updates that guidance as each one closes. It does not publish a schedule you can look yourself up in, and no adviser, forum post or calculator can tell you the month your notice will land. Treat any specific date quoted for a named group with suspicion unless it comes from the DWP guidance itself, which is linked in the sources below and is the only version that stays current. What you can do is be ready. Know roughly what your Universal Credit award would be, have your bank details, identity documents and rent figures to hand, and check that DWP holds your current address, because the notice goes out by post and the clock starts on the date printed on it.

The notice arrives by post, or goes to your appointee if you have one, and names a deadline date. It is normally about three months out. On that date your legacy benefit ends whether or not you have claimed, so ignoring the letter loses you the old money without gaining the new. Claim in time and the old benefit runs on for two further weeks after your claim; that fortnight is not repayable and is not deducted from Universal Credit. Do nothing and entitlement simply ends two weeks after the deadline. Once you start, you have 28 days from creating your online account to finish and submit the claim, or you begin again, which is a deadline inside a deadline and easy to trip over.

If you cannot claim in time, call the Universal Credit Migration Notice Helpline before the deadline passes and explain why. DWP can give you longer where there is a good reason, and the request has to reach them while the original date is still live. Afterwards an extension is no longer possible: you can still claim Universal Credit, but on normal rules and with no transitional element, which is exactly the position a migration notice was meant to protect you from. Build in time for the wait too. A claim takes about five weeks to reach its first payment, and an award starting from a standard allowance of £424.90 a month for a single person aged 25 or over arrives monthly, in arrears. An advance can bridge the gap.