Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, if he will estimate the number of cases of a local authority paying a landlord directly because a tenant who receives universal credit was more than eight weeks behind on rent payments; and what steps his Department has taken to (a) encourage tenants in receipt of universal credit to pay rent on time and (b) tackle repeated non-payment of rent by universal credit claimants.

Housing payments are not administered by Local Authorities under Universal Credit. All claimants in Universal Credit are offered practical help and advice on budgeting and money management early on in their claim alongside being advised of their responsibility to pay rent to their landlords. We make an initial judgement on each claim as to whether the claimant is at risk of default. If so we can put them on managed payments immediately. Any representations received from the landlord will be taken into account when reaching this judgement.

If it is decided to pay the rent direct to the claimant then we have two safeguards in place. First, we will review our initial decision if we are advised that arrears have reached the equivalent of one month's rent. Second, if direct payments have continued, we will move to payment to the landlord if we are advised that arrears have reached the equivalent of two months' rent.