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<p>People on ‘long-term sickness benefits’ have been assumed as those in the main phase of Employment and Support Allowance (ESA) and the Universal Credit (UC) Limited Capability to Work (LCW) and Limited capability for work and work-related activity (LCWRA) groups. The Department regularly publishes Benefit Combination statistics on <a href="https://stat-xplore.dwp.gov.uk/" target="_blank">Stat-Xplore</a> and these were <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/dwp-statistical-summaries#:~:text=Changes to Benefit Combinations statistics" target="_blank">extended inFebruary 2024</a> to include additional information for those on ESA and the UC Health Journey, so can now be used to provide the information, from quarter ending May 2019 to the end of the latest quarter, August 2023.</p><p> </p><p>The figures can be obtained from the ‘<a href="https://stat-xplore.dwp.gov.uk/webapi/opendatabase?id=Ben_Com_New" target="_blank">Benefit Combinations - Data from May 2019 for England and Wales</a>’ dataset using the ‘Additional Claim Details’ options. The ‘ESA Phase of Claim’ and ‘UC Health Journey’ options should be used to identify quarterly totals for ESA Support Group (SG), ESA Work-related Activity Group (WRAG), Universal Credit Limited Capability to Work (LCW) and Limited capability for work and work-related activity (LCWRA) groups, and those on one benefit but not the other using the ‘Not On’ options. The ‘Geography’ option can then be used to filter by the relevant Westminster Parliamentary Constituency.</p><p> </p><p>Users can log in or access Stat-Xplore as a guest user and, if needed, can access <a href="https://stat-xplore.dwp.gov.uk/webapi/online-help/Getting-Started.html" target="_blank">guidance</a> on how to extract the information required.</p><p> </p><p>Using the Benefit Combinations data on Stat-Xplore, the number of people on long-term sickness benefits in the Wolverhampton South East constituency is provided in the table below:</p><p> </p><table><tbody><tr><td><p> </p></td><td><p><strong>Aug 2019</strong></p></td><td><p><strong>Aug 2020</strong></p></td><td><p><strong>Aug 2021</strong></p></td><td><p><strong>Aug 2022</strong></p></td><td><p><strong>Aug 2023</strong></p></td></tr><tr><td><p><strong>Total</strong></p></td><td><p>4,150</p></td><td><p>4,440</p></td><td><p>4,690</p></td><td><p>5,080</p></td><td><p>5,830</p></td></tr></tbody></table><p><strong> </strong></p><p><strong>Source:</strong> <a href="https://stat-xplore.dwp.gov.uk/" target="_blank">Stat-Xplore</a></p><p><strong>Notes:</strong></p><ol><li>Totals are rounded to 10.</li><li>UC Data is not available prior to 2019 as some UC claims were recorded on an interim operational system called UC Live Service (UCLS). Figures for UCLS Health claimants are not currently collated and to develop that information would incur disproportionate cost.</li><li>A person can claim both ESA and be on the UC health caseload and these claimants would be counted in each separate caseload in the published data on Stat-Xplore. Benefit Combinations data on Stat-Xplore allows these 'Dual claims' to be identified and only counted once in the above.</li></ol> |