Income Support Claimants by London Borough, Counts and Rates

100% of claims data provides a snapshot of Income Support recipients, a benefit for low-income individuals not required to seek full-time employment. Figures are rounded to the nearest 10 and rates are calculated as a percentage of the population aged 16-64. This dataset is sourced from NOMISweb and curated by the Greater London Authority.

Use Cases

• Mapping geographic disparities in welfare dependency based on borough-level claimant rates.
• Analyzing long-term trends in Income Support claims, with caution for policy changes in 2003.
• Profiling claimant demographics based on described categories like lone parents and people with disabilities.
• Benchmarking borough-level social need against national or regional averages using claimant percentages.

Strengths

• Based on 100% of claims, eliminating sampling error.
• Includes both raw counts and rates normalized against population estimates.
• Data is rounded to the nearest 10, providing a consistent level of aggregation.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Time-series analysis is complicated by major policy changes in 2003 affecting claimant counts.
• Figures under 500 are noted as having high variation and should be used with caution.

Provenance

Source

NOMISweb (https://www.nomisweb.co.uk), curated by the Greater London Authority.

Collection Method

Administrative data based on 100% of claims.

Time Range

Data relates to a single reference date, the last day of each month.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-06-24 21:07:43.084465; freshness should be verified.

Geography

London boroughs, United Kingdom.