Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, pursuant to the Answer of 20 February 2018 to Question 127002, on Employment Support Allowance: Correspondence, how many claimants of support for mortgage interest were not contacted by letter by the target date of the end of February.

To date, the department has sent information to around 95% SMI claimants at the address at which they are claiming SMI benefit. In the remaining 5% of cases (approximately 5,500 cases) we have so far been unable to contact these claimants for a variety of reasons such as where we need to obtain a current telephone number for the claimant. We are in the process of writing to these claimants and continue to make every effort to contact them. All claimants will be given at least 6 weeks from their loan offer date to consider their options and make a decision whether to take the offer of an SMI loan.