Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many and what proportion of applications for short term benefit advance were successful in the most recent 12 months for which data is available; and what reasons were given to those people who made unsuccessful applications in that period.

Please see table below for Short Term Benefit Advance (STBA) applications and those which have been successful;

For context we have also supplied the STBA Applications Received and the number of claims which have not been submitted for decision due to primary benefit being paid.

The Department does not hold data on reasons for unsuccessful applications.

Notes

STBA Applications Received cannot be calculated using the totals of Primary Benefit Paid and Referred for Decision due to other categories being included that are not shown.

Only Working Age Benefits (i.e. ESA, IB, JSA and IS) are included in the above information for benefit advance applications as the number of applications received for State Pension Credit and Carer’s Allowance is not available.

Source

STBA Primary Benefits Paid & Referred for Decision - Management Information System Programme (MISP). This collation is based on clerical counts submitted by the Centres and is Internal MI which has been agreed for use in publications of Parliamentary questions and Freedom of Information requests.

STBA Awarded - Benefit Expenditure Business Information system.