Universal Credit: Habitual Residence Test
(asked on 17th October 2025) - View Source
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many habitual residence tests related to Universal Credit assessments have been granted in each of the last five years.
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 2020 to March 2021 | 912,000 |
April 2021 to March 2022 | 1,029,000 |
April 2022 to March 2023 | 527,000 |
April 2023 to March 2024 | 524,000 |
April 2024 to March 2025 | 798,000 |
April 2025 to September 2025 | 400,000 |
(Source: DWP UC HRT Administrative data)
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.
- Not all HRT passes lead to a UC award as claimants need to meet all eligibility criteria.
- All figures are rounded to the nearest thousand decisions.
- An individual may have multiple HRT assessments and multiple passes.
- 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.