Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, whether he has any plans to review the freezing of local housing allowance rates.

There are no plans to lift the four year Local Housing Allowance (LHA) freeze before April 2020.

The Government recognises however that the impact of this measure varies across the country, especially in areas of high rental growth and in view of this 30 per cent of the savings from the LHA Freeze are being recycled to create Targeted Affordability Funding. This funding is used to increase LHA rates in areas where local rents have diverged the most. For example in 2017/18, 48 LHA rates have been increased by 3 per cent. Further Targeted Affordability Funding will be made available in 2018/19 and 2019/20.

In addition since 2011, the Government has provided around £900 million in Discretionary Housing Payments to local authorities to protect vulnerable claimants and support households affected by different welfare reforms including the freeze to LHA rates.