Benefits · Adequacy, take-up and hardship · Great Britain
Adequacy, take-up and hardship: who misses out?
Up to 910,000 pensioner families entitled to Pension Credit did not claim it in 2023–24 — up to £2.5bn unclaimed. Take-up is measured only for pension-age benefits; for working-age support the gap is not published.
Evidence last reviewed 3 October 2026
Unclaimed support
Do people claim the support they are entitled to?
About 6 in 10 people entitled to Pension Credit claim it
Estimated take-up of income-related benefits among entitled pensioners, by caseload (people) and expenditure (money), Great Britain, 2023–24.
- Pension Credit — peopleshare of entitled people who claimed62%
- Pension Credit — moneyshare of the available amount claimed71%
- Housing Benefit (pensioners) — people85%
- Housing Benefit (pensioners) — money87%
Great Britain · 2023–24 (financial year ending 2024) · Official statistics from the Family Resources Survey linked to DWP records; estimates have ranges
Sources, definitions and data — About 6 in 10 people entitled to Pension Credit claim it
- Geography:
- Great Britain — Pensioner benefit units entitled to each benefit
- Measure:
- Per cent take-up
- Period:
- 2023–24 (financial year ending 2024)
- Status:
- Official statistics from the Family Resources Survey linked to DWP records; estimates have ranges
- Calculation:
- As published (central estimates).
- Compare with:
- 2022–23: Pension Credit 65% (people), 78% (money)
- Not included / breaks:
- Working-age benefits (Universal Credit) are not covered by DWP’s take-up statistics. Survey-based, so entitlement is modelled from reported income and savings.
Source: DWP, Income-related benefits: estimates of take-up, financial year ending 2024 (released 30 October 2025). Chart BEN-09.
View the data as a table
| Measure | 2023–24 |
|---|---|
| Pension Credit — people | 62% |
| Pension Credit — money | 71% |
| Housing Benefit (pensioners) — people | 85% |
| Housing Benefit (pensioners) — money | 87% |
| Pension Credit: families entitled but not claiming (up to) | 910,000 |
| Pension Credit: unclaimed (up to) | £2.5bn |
| Housing Benefit (pensioners): unclaimed (up to) | £1.1bn |
DWP’s take-up statistics cover only pension-age benefits. There is no published estimate of how many people entitled to Universal Credit do not claim it, so the size of the working-age gap is unknown — a gap in the evidence, not evidence of no gap.
A separate DWP measure, “unfulfilled eligibility”, estimates that people already claiming could have received 1.2% more of benefit spending (£3.7bn) in 2025–26 if they had reported all their circumstances — most of it in DLA, PIP and Universal Credit. That is different from take-up (people not claiming at all) and from underpayments caused by DWP’s own mistakes.
The benefit cap: a limit on adequacy, and the key to viral totals
| Household | Outside Greater London | Greater London |
|---|---|---|
| Couple, or single parent with children living with them | £423.46 | £486.98 |
| Single adult | £283.71 | £326.29 |
The cap limits the total some working-age households receive, whatever their rent or number of children. It does not apply over State Pension age; to households earning £881 a month or more combined after tax; to people on Universal Credit with limited capability for work and work-related activity or caring for a disabled person; or where anyone in the household receives PIP, DLA, Attendance Allowance, Carer’s Allowance, the ESA support component, Industrial Injuries benefits, Adult Disability Payment or a war pension.
That is why almost every viral “family gets £X a week” story describes a total above the cap: it is only possible if the household is exempt, and the usual reason for exemption is disability or caring. The figure can be accurate and the “paid to sit at home” framing still wrong.
Hardship: what is and is not measured
There is no official count of food bank use. The Trussell network — a charity, and only part of all UK food banks — gave out more than 2.6 million emergency food parcels in calendar year 2025, 12% fewer than in 2024; Trussell links the fall to easing inflation. It is a lower bound, not a measure of all need, and parcel counts are not people.
Official measures of hardship — relative and absolute poverty after housing costs, and material deprivation — come from the Households Below Average Income statistics and are shown on the Inequality page. They are the right test of whether a benefit change helps: a falling caseload is not success if eligible people lose support. The options for take-up and adequacy are compared in What would move the needle?
Sources and methods (4)
- DWP, Income-related benefits: estimates of take-up, financial year ending 2024 (released 30 October 2025) — Pension Credit and pension-age Housing Benefit take-up
- DWP, Unfulfilled eligibility in the benefit system, financial year ending 2026 (released 14 May 2026) — unfulfilled eligibility
- GOV.UK, Benefit cap — benefit cap amounts and exemptions
- Trussell, End of year food bank statistics (calendar year 2025) — emergency food parcels (charity data)
Method notes
- Take-up estimates come from the Family Resources Survey linked to DWP records for 2023–24 (financial year ending 2024); they carry ranges, and “up to” figures are upper estimates.
- Unfulfilled eligibility, take-up and official-error underpayments are three different measures and must not be added together.
- Trussell figures are charity administrative data, not official statistics.