Unclaimed benefits in Ireland, the UK, France, and the Netherlands.

Policy in Practice's Missing Out 2024 report puts unclaimed income-related benefits and social tariffs at £22.7 billion a year across Great Britain, affecting around eight million people at an average of £2,700 each. The Missing Out 2025 update reports £24 billion. Universal Credit, Council Tax Support, and Carer's Allowance are the biggest absolute misses; Pension Credit and Attendance Allowance are the highest-profile per-person ones.

DWP's own published take-up statistics confirm a multi-billion gap on Pension Credit specifically: around £2 billion a year unclaimed by eligible pensioner households.

DREES, the statistical service of the French ministry of social affairs, publishes regular non-recours measurements. Recent work puts non-take-up at around 34% for RSA (Revenu de Solidarite Active) on a quarterly basis, with about a fifth of eligible households persistently not claiming across three consecutive quarters. For the minimum vieillesse (ASPA), the figure is around 50% of eligible single people.

Lack of information is the single largest reason. DREES's opinion barometer finds that four in ten respondents say the main reason for non-take-up is not knowing about the benefit or the right contact point. Fear of administrative consequences and refusal of assistance follow.

Dienst Toeslagen's own research, summarised by CBS, puts 2021 non-take-up at around 12% for zorgtoeslag (healthcare allowance) and around 11% for huurtoeslag (rent allowance), with around 8% for kindgebonden budget and around 3% for kinderopvangtoeslag. In July 2025 Dienst Toeslagen wrote directly to over 200,000 households it had identified as likely entitled to zorgtoeslag for 2024 but not claiming it.

The 1 January 2026 huurtoeslag reform removed the hard rekenhuur eligibility cliff (rent above the cap no longer disqualifies; the subsidy is just computed on the capped amount). That fix should expand take-up, but our engine still encounters households that do not realise they qualify.

We have not found a Policy in Practice-equivalent headline figure for Ireland, and the Department of Social Protection does not publish per-scheme take-up rates on the same cadence as DWP. That data gap is itself a problem, and we flag it here so the page is honest about where the evidence is thin.

What we do know: Budget 2026 expanded Fuel Allowance to around 50,000 additional householdsvia Working Family Payment, after years of advocacy that the cohort had been excluded. That number is the size of one cohort that was missing out and is a useful proxy for the broader pattern. ESRI's work on energy poverty documents elevated rates among low-income households.

Means-tested schemes likely to be under-claimed in Ireland include Working Family Payment itself (income-tested, conditional on hours of work), Carer's Allowance, Fuel Allowance for older people, and the Medical Card / GP Visit Card combination.