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Privacy Policy

This page explains the privacy policy for the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), including Universal Credit, and how we will use and protect any information we collect about you when you visit this website.

How DWP collects and uses information

The Department for Work and Pensions (referred to as ʻWeʼ below) collects information to deal with:

  • social security (including Universal Credit, Housing Benefit, Council Tax Reduction Schemes and Local Welfare provision)
  • child support
  • vaccine damage
  • employment and training
  • promoting financial planning for retirement
  • policy relating to occupational and personal pension schemes

The information we collect about you depends on the reason for your business with us, but we may use the information for any of these purposes.

If you make a joint claim for Universal Credit, we may share the information about your claim with your partner if it is relevant and necessary.

We may check information about you and your partner with other information we have.

We may get information about you and your partner from other people and certain other organisations.

We share your information for a number of reasons, including to:

  • check the accuracy of information
  • help people with particular difficulties, such as troubled families
  • help people get or stay in work
  • help people get education and training to improve their chances of getting work
  • support people with independent living, including home help and respite care
  • prevent or detect crime
  • check payments for services
  • protect public funds in other ways
  • use in research or statistics

The Data Protection Act

The Department for Work and Pensions is the Data Controller for Universal Credit for the purposes of the Data Protection Act. Our website does not enable our visitors to communicate with other visitors or for them to post information to be accessed by others.

Our personal information charter (GOV.UK) explains:

  • how we collect and use personal information
  • how to ask for a copy of the information we hold about you

Cookies

We want our services to be easy, useful and reliable. For services delivered on the internet, this sometimes involves placing small amounts of information on your device, for example, computer or mobile phone. These small files are known as cookies. They cannot be used to identify you personally.

These pieces of information are used to improve services by, for example:

  • enabling a service to recognise your device so you don't have to give the same information several times during one task
  • recognising that you may already have given a username and password so you don't need to do it for every web page requested
  • measuring how many people are using services, so they can be made easier to use and there's enough capacity to ensure they are fast

If you delete cookies or you set your browser not to accept cookies, you will not be able to use some of our services.

How we use cookies
You can manage cookies yourself and learn more about them on GOV.UK

Internet browser cookies - what they are and how to manage them (GOV.UK)

Links to other websites

This privacy policy applies only to the Universal Credit site on GOV.UK. When you move to another website, you will need to read the privacy statement of that site.

Changes to this privacy policy

If this privacy policy changes, we'll update this page. Check this page to make sure you're aware of what information we collect, how we use it and the circumstances we may share it with other organisations.