Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what assessment he has made of the potential impact of freezing Local Housing Allowance on homelessness.

The causes of homelessness are multi-faceted and often complex, they interact dynamically making it difficult to isolate the relative importance of individual factors.

Government is committed to preventing homelessness where possible. We have announced the allocation of £654 million in funding through the Homelessness Prevention Grant that will be made available to local authorities in 2023/24 and 2024/25. This is in addition to the £50m top-up to the Homelessness Prevention Grant for 2022/23 announced in December, which will support local authorities to help prevent vulnerable households from becoming homeless this winter. This investment builds on the £316 million in funding already available to local authorities through the Homelessness Prevention Grant for 2022/23.

In 2020 Local Housing Allowance rates were raised to the 30th percentile, a significant investment of almost £1 billion, we have maintained the increase since then so that everyone who benefited from the increase continues to do so.

Discretionary Housing Payments (DHPs) are available for those who face a shortfall in meeting their housing costs. Since 2011 we have provided nearly £1.6 billion in funding to local authorities for DHPs.