PARLIAMENTARY WRITTEN QUESTION
Habitual Residence Test (5 November 2024)

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, pursuant to the Answer of 4 November 2024 to Question 11207 on Habitual Residence Test, how many habitual residence tests related to Universal Credit assessments have been granted in each of the last five years.

Asked by:
Rupert Lowe (Restore Britain)

The table below gives the number of Universal Credit (UC) Habitual Residence Test (HRT) assessments that resulted in a ‘pass’ decision in the past five years.

Date Decision Entered on Admin System	Number of UC HRT 'Pass' Decisions
April 2019 to March 2020	381,000
April 2020 to March 2021	918,000
April 2021 to March 2022	1,046,000
April 2022 to March 2023	555,000
April 2023 to March 2024	533,000
April 2024 to September 2024	322,000

Source: DWP internal analysis of UC Dataworks tables)

Notes:

• The Habitual Residence Test (HRT) is nationality blind. It is applied to British citizens returning from abroad to check for factual habitual residency in the UK, as well as to foreign nationals to check they have an immigration status permitting access to public funds and that they are factually habitually resident.
• All figures are rounded to the nearest thousand decisions.
• An individual may have multiple HRT assessments.
• These figures are not Official Statistics. These figures stem from administrative data and represent the best estimates using current methodologies and assumptions about the data. Future improvements in methodology may lead to different subsequent estimates.
• Figures are for the UK.

Answered by:
Andrew Western (Labour)
12 November 2024