Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what recent assessment she has made of the potential effect of removing the additional covid-19 support funding from the Discretionary Housing Payments allocations to local authorities on levels of homelessness.

The Government has made available £140m in DHPs funding for local authorities in England and Wales for 2021-22 to help support vulnerable people with housing costs.

We increased the LHA rates in April 2020 to the 30th percentile of local rents, an investment costing nearly £1 billion and have maintained rates at the same cash level in 2021/22.

In addition to the central government contribution, English and Welsh local authorities are able to top up Discretionary Housing Payments funding up to a maximum of two and a half times this figure, using their own funds.

We consider the allocation of Discretionary Housing Payments to individual local authorities each year. We also monitor evolving demand and trends by analysing the information that local authorities provide regarding the amount of Discretionary Housing Payment funding they are awarding.

Since the start of the pandemic, we have been monitoring the DHPs spend more closely than in previous years and will continue to monitor spend throughout 2021/22.