Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how much funding has been allocated for universal support in 2016-17; how much funding for universal support has been allocated to each local authority in 2016-17; and how many people have accessed universal support.

£2.9m was allocated for Universal Support in 2016/17. The Department is unable to provide information on how much each Local Authority was allocated during that period. Individual payments to the 380 local authorities were made at varying times and have never been collated. To collate and reconcile all the data for budgeting and digital support in Universal Credit would incur disproportionate costs.

The information is not held for how many people have accessed universal support in 2016/17. The Department has started collating the relevant Management Information centrally from April 2017.