Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what estimate he has made of the number of Universal Credit claimants who will have 53 charging days for rent in 2024.

Universal Credit always converts weekly amounts to monthly sums using 52 weeks. The issue of there being 53 rent charging days in a year is relevant only for Universal Credit (UC) claimants who have their rent charged on a weekly basis and have 53 charging periods in a calendar year.

UC claimants in the Social Rented Sector are typically charged rent weekly every Monday and so in a typical year their 12 monthly UC payments will align with the 52 charging periods. Every six years, or five if including a leap year, they will have 53 charging periods. In 2024 there will be 53 of these periods with the 53rd rent payment occurring on the final day of the calendar year. 53 charging periods will not apply in all UC claims and some claimants will not have a 53 charging period year during the life of their benefit claim.

We have considered alternative options for those with weekly tenancies, but each have their own limitations and disadvantages for claimants. The matter occurs because weekly charging periods can never be accurately aligned with monthly periods. Tenants of social housing providers are used to managing varying outgoings every month depending on whether four or five rent payments are due – not just during a year in which there are 53 charging periods.

Discretionary Housing Payments can be paid to those entitled to Housing Benefit or the housing element of Universal Credit who face a shortfall in meeting their housing costs. Since 2011, the government has provided nearly £1.7 billion in Discretionary Housing Payments to local authorities.

We do not have forecasts for this group for 2024. The most recent data from DWP’s statistical release platform Stat-Xplore is for August 2023 which shows that there were 1,664,104 Social Rented Sector households receiving housing support through UC, of which the department’s analysts estimate that approximately 1.4 million (85%) were charged weekly.