Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what estimate her Department has made of the level of housing benefit (a) fraud and (b) overpayments in each region of England and Wales in each year since 2015.

The Department of Work and Pensions publishes estimates on the total amount of fraud and error in the benefit system on GOV.UK. These estimates include figures for Housing Benefit, however, these are only available at a national level.

Housing Benefit debt recoveries and fraud data is published at a regional level on GOV.UK. This publication provides data on Housing Benefit overpayments outstanding, identified, recovered and written off. From April 2016 the publications no longer include fraud data.

Housing Benefit entitlement reduction statistics, available on GOV.UK, were developed as an experimental proxy measure of local authority fraud and error performance.