Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, with reference to page 82 of the report, UK Poverty: Causes and Solutions, published by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation on 6 September 2016, if he will make an assessment of the potential merits of the recommendation to uprate local housing allowance in line with local market rents.

Currently, Local Housing Allowance rates are frozen for 4 years from April 2016. In practice, this means that they either remain at the April 2015 rate or are set at the 30^th percentile of local rents if this is lower. There is however, Targeted Affordability Funding available and we have used this in 2017/18 to increase 48 LHA rates by 3 per cent in areas with high rental costs. Further funding will be available for this purpose in 2018/19 and 2019/20.