Work and Pensions Longitudinal Study - List of Uses
The Work and Pensions Longitudinal Study provides the opportunity for DWP to significantly improve both the analytical evidence base and operational effectiveness of the department. It will help DWP to improve our policies, and target our resources to those most in need of our assistance, ultimately improving the service for our customers. Below is a list of the uses already identified for the Study and a list of teams where approval for access to the Study has been given.:
Statistical and Research Uses
- Provide a range of statistics, management information and research on the success of Jobcentre Plus in helping people into work and keeping them in work;
- Track benefit leavers in and out of work and monitor the sustainability of each employment;
- Monitor the destination of people leaving benefit, for reasons other than to enter work;
- Monitor how many people who left New Deal programmes for work are still employed 13 weeks later;
- Start to evaluate individual policies and their impact in the short, medium and long-term and identify which parts of the policy are working and which are not;
- Start to improve the quality of forecasting for the pensioner population;
- Evaluate family unit benefit data for pensioners to establish overall pensioner income from benefits and so monitor our impact on pensions policy;
- Effectively monitor the Department's policies to comply with the Race Relations Amendment Act;
- Improve the efficiency and effectiveness of DWP through better statistics, research and evaluation.
Operational Uses
- Improve the capabilities of individual fraud and error investigations;
- A potential source for marketing (positive, responsible marketing to groups of customers).
Business case uses sometimes change because of department needs, priorities, new uses of the data and business cases expiring. These have been and will be updated in the list below and posted on this page every three months.
Applications to access Work and Pensions Longitudinal Study
Click this link to view details of applications in a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet 
As detailed within the safeguards page, DWP are establishing an ethics committee. Any new uses of the data, which the Head of Data Services in DWP considers should be referred to the ethics committee, will not be taken forward until the committee has discussed and voted upon them.
Contact point for further information:
wpls@dwp.gsi.gov.uk
Call Information Directorate on 0114 209 8562
