UK Incapacity Benefit and ESA Recipients Due to Mental Illness, Annual Data

Incapacity Benefit and Employment Support Allowance claimants where the reason is mental and behavioural disorders. Data is for May each year, covering working-age claimants in the UK. The dataset is provided by the Greater London Authority via the NOMIS platform.

Use Cases

• Analyze trends in welfare claims for mental health reasons based on annual May snapshots.
• Assess the impact of policy changes like the 2008 introduction of ESA based on claimant data.
• Model the prevalence of mental health-related work incapacity based on claimant counts.
• Compare claimant demographics or regions if such data is present in the full dataset.

Strengths

• Data is collected annually, providing a consistent time series for May of each year.
• The description specifies a clear policy transition from Incapacity Benefit to ESA in October 2008.
• The dataset originates from the authoritative NOMIS platform and is associated with the Greater London Authority.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• The description metadata is limited; actual data quality requires manual inspection after download.

Provenance

Source

NOMIS platform, Greater London Authority

Collection Method

Likely administrative data from UK welfare systems.

Time Range

Annual data for May of each year; policy context from 2008 onward.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-06-24 21:08:40.600440; freshness should be verified.

Geography

United Kingdom (implied by UK welfare benefits and NOMIS platform).