Bereavement support: BSP formula and historical WPA (planned)

What’s currently modelled¶

Just the FRS-reported amount:

class bsp(Variable):
    value_type = float
    entity = Person
    label = "Bereavement Support Payment"
    definition_period = YEAR
    unit = GBP

    adds = ["bsp_reported"]

That means:

Reform analyses changing BSP rates have no household-level surface.
Anyone bereaved after the FRS reference week never appears as a BSP recipient even if eligible.
The Enhanced FRS (frs.py) fills bsp_reported from FRS benefit codes 6 and 9, and so did Microcosm UK up to its certified 19 October 2026 build (frs_spine.py); Microcosm’s own source notes say code 6 mixes benefits and code 9 is tax-free War Widow’s Pension. The FRS labels code 6 “Bereavement Support Payment / Widowed Parent’s Allowance” and code 9 “War Widow’s/Widower’s Pension”, so wherever both codes are summed the reported “BSP” also carries Widowed Parent’s Allowance and War Widow’s Pension. Microcosm’s main branch now puts code 9 in war_widows_pension_reported and keeps only code 6 in bsp_reported (microcosm#1333).
Since #2382 (2.135.7), War Widow’s Pension has its own variables, war_widows_pension_reported and war_widows_pension. bsp_reported stays nominally flat for datasets that explicitly supply both war_widows_pension_reported and widowed_parents_allowance_reported in the same source year, including all-zero columns. Datasets with either column missing retain CPI uprating, as do household situations. Microcosm’s merged #1383 supplies both columns and closes #1222. Older releases and the Enhanced FRS retain the compatibility path; policyengine-uk-data#578 tracks the Enhanced FRS code-9 move. See the dataset-source guide for projection, fallback and off-rate residual treatment.
Since #2572, WPA also has its own variables, widowed_parents_allowance_reported (CPI-uprated) and widowed_parents_allowance. Unlike BSP, WPA is taxable (ITEPA 2003 s. 577), Universal Credit unearned income (UC Regulations 2013 reg. 66(1)(b)(vi)), Housing Benefit income less £15 a week, a welfare benefit for the benefit cap and an overlapping benefit for Carer’s Allowance and Carer Support Payment. It ends at State Pension age and while the recipient lives with a partner (SSCBA 1992 s. 39A(4) and (5)), so it never reaches Pension Credit. Older datasets still put it in bsp_reported; Microcosm #1383 separates amounts matching its positive WPA rate rule, while retaining unclassified off-rate amounts in BSP.

Proposed scope¶

Phase 1: rule-based BSP formula¶

The BSP under the Pensions Act 2014, Part 5 and the Bereavement Support Payment Regulations 2017 (SI 2017/410) pays:

A lump sum of either £2,500 (standard rate) or £3,500 (higher rate), paid only if the claim is made within 12 months of the death (SI 2017/410 reg 3(2) and (5)).
Up to 18 monthly payments of £100 (standard) or £350 (higher), all 18 only if the claim is made within 3 months of the death (GOV.UK), for a death on or after 6 April 2017, when Pensions Act 2014 s. 30 came fully into force. Someone who reaches State Pension age within 18 months of the death may get fewer.

The higher rate applies if the claimant was pregnant or entitled to Child Benefit when the partner died, or later became entitled to Child Benefit for a child who lived with them or the partner immediately before the death (SI 2017/410 reg 4). The Bereavement Benefits (Remedial) Order 2023 (SI 2023/134) extended BSP and WPA to cohabiting partners with children, with effect back to 30 August 2018, after the Supreme Court’s 2018 McLaughlin judgment (on WPA) and the High Court’s 2020 Jackson judgment (on BSP). It kept the 18-month maximum, but a cohabiting partner whose partner died between 6 April 2017 and 29 August 2018 gets 18 monthly payments less one for each month that had passed by 29 August 2018 (SI 2017/410 reg 2(7) to (11)).

To model this we need:

bsp_initial_payment_due (Person, YEAR): a new input that is true only in the year the BSP claim is made after the partner’s death, so the single initial payment is paid once. A flag for “bereaved in the last 18 months” would stay true across two consecutive annual periods and pay the lump sum twice.
bsp_higher_rate_eligible (Person, YEAR): whether they were pregnant or entitled to Child Benefit when the partner died, or became entitled afterwards for a child who lived with them or the partner (SI 2017/410 reg 4).
bsp_months_remaining (Person, YEAR): how many of the 18 monthly instalments fall within the simulation year (0 to 12). This is where the 18-month window belongs.

The BSP formula then becomes:

bsp = (
    lump_sum_amount * bsp_initial_payment_due
    + monthly_amount * bsp_months_remaining
)

An alternative is a single date-of-death (or claim-date) input from which both the initial-payment year and the months in each year are derived. Either way the lump sum is tied to one year only.

Both lump_sum_amount and monthly_amount parameter trees split on bsp_higher_rate_eligible (£3,500 / £350 vs £2,500 / £100).

These parameters should be held flat, with no uprating key. BSP is not uprated: the four amounts in SI 2017/410 reg 3 have been £350, £3,500, £100 and £2,500 since April 2017, and the Social Security Benefits Up-rating Order 2026 (SI 2026/148), art 19, says each of them “remains unchanged”.

Phase 2: historical WPA under the same formula¶

Widowed Parent’s Allowance (under Social Security Contributions and Benefits Act 1992 s. 39A) is paid for deaths before 6 April 2017 (s. 39A(1)(a)), except where a woman’s husband died before 9 April 2001 (s. 39A(1A)). The benefit:

Continues while the survivor is entitled to Child Benefit for a qualifying child (or is pregnant) and is under State Pension age, and ends on remarriage or a new civil or cohabiting partnership (s. 39A(4) and (5)).
Is uprated each April (£156.65 a week from April 2026, SI 2026/148 art 18).
Was replaced by BSP for deaths from 6 April 2017.

For historical analyses the model should:

Add wpa_eligible (Person, YEAR): the partner died before 6 April 2017 (but not a woman’s husband before 9 April 2001), the partner met the contribution conditions, and the survivor is under State Pension age, has not remarried or formed a new partnership, and is entitled to Child Benefit for a qualifying child or is pregnant (SSCBA 1992 s. 39A).
Replace the adds of widowed_parents_allowance (Person, YEAR) with a formula reading the WPA rate parameter (which would need backfilling under gov/dwp/wpa/rate.yaml).

WPA is closed to deaths from 6 April 2017, but new claims for earlier deaths are still possible (GOV.UK): the 2023 Remedial Order brought about 3,400 successful WPA claims from cohabiting partners between February 2023 and November 2024 (DWP, July 2025). Existing awards continue while the surviving parent is entitled to Child Benefit and under State Pension age, so some recipients remain. In older datasets they sit inside bsp_reported (see above), so they are already counted in income. Datasets that fill widowed_parents_allowance_reported distinguish those reported amounts from BSP; the gap left is a rule-based amount for reforms.

Phase 3: data-side bereavement inputs¶

Neither bsp_initial_payment_due nor bsp_months_remaining exists in the FRS. The FRS is a cross-section, not a panel, and its benefits documentation shows no record of when a partner died, so these inputs would need imputing in the data (Microcosm UK, now the certified default UK dataset):

start from FRS respondents who report BSP (once it is separated from the other codes, as above) and from widowed respondents;
calibrate to DWP’s BSP caseloads (Stat-Xplore, by age, gender and geography, from April 2017) and to WPA caseloads where DWP still publishes them.

This is the heaviest of the three phases; without it the new variables work for the household calculator (which can input them directly) but not for microsim aggregates.

Open questions¶

WPA recipients who would have been on BSP under the new rules: do we want a reform-side parameter “treat all WPA receipts as if they were BSP” for counterfactual analysis?
The 2023 Remedial Order extended BSP to cohabiting partners, with effect from 30 August 2018. Eligibility should not require marriage or civil partnership where the survivor was pregnant or entitled to Child Benefit (Pensions Act 2014 s. 30(1)(aa)), for deaths on or after 6 April 2017; for deaths before 30 August 2018 the monthly payments are cut as in SI 2017/410 reg 2(7) to (11).

References¶

Pensions Act 2014, Part 5: primary statute for BSP.
Bereavement Support Payment Regulations 2017 (SI 2017/410).
Social Security Benefits Up-rating Order 2026 (SI 2026/148), art 19: holds the four BSP amounts unchanged.
Bereavement Benefits (Remedial) Order 2023 (SI 2023/134): cohabiting-parent extension, effective from 30 August 2018.
SSCBA 1992 s. 39A: legacy WPA basis.
gov.uk, Bereavement Support Payment and Widowed Parent’s Allowance.
DWP, Stat-Xplore: Bereavement Support Payment claims and recipients from April 2017.
DWP, Uptake of backdated BSP and WPA under the Bereavement Benefits (Remedial) Order 2023 (July 2025).
Issues: #466 (BSP formula), #465 (historical WPA).