Housing Benefit
(asked on 2nd May 2019) - View Source
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, with reference to the recommendation to exempt claimants in temporary accommodation from the benefit cap on page 7 of the report of the Work and Pensions Committee, The Benefit Cap, published on 12 March 2019, HC 1477, if she will ask local authorities to publish the number of households that are currently affected by the cap in their area; and how much Discretionary Housing Payment funding has been used to cover their rent shortfalls in the most recent period for which figures are available.
The latest official statistics for households capped under Housing Benefit and Universal Credit were published on 2nd May 2019, and contain data on households capped to February 2019, published here:
https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/benefit-cap-number-of-households-capped-to-february-2019.
Statistics by Local Authority are available in Tables 2 and 9, respectively. The number of households who have had their Housing Benefit award capped by local authorities are also published on the DWP Stat Xplore portal (https://stat-xplore.dwp.gov.uk/).
Statistics on the use of Discretionary Housing Payments (for local authorities in England and Wales) are provided by local authorities on a voluntary basis and as such may not correspond exactly to the total Discretionary Housing Payment funds allocated. In addition, Discretionary Housing Payment awards can be recorded against a combination of welfare reform categories including households affected by the benefit cap.
The latest statistics on spend by local authorities, covering the period April to September 2018, are published here:
Statistics relating to the specific welfare reform category can be found in Table 7.
The latest full year of statistics available are for the 17/18 financial year and are published here: