Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, whether his Department plans to collect data on the reasons for refusing applications for Crisis Payments under the Crisis and Resilience Fund in (a) Surrey and (b) Surrey Heath constituency.

The Crisis and Resilience Fund (CRF) provides funding to local authorities in England to support those experiencing financial hardship. The Fund enables local authorities to provide Crisis Payments, Housing Payments and support people build longer-term financial resilience.

Local authorities are required to report the number of Crisis Payment applications received, awarded and refused. The Department does not currently require authorities to report the reasons for refusing individual applications. For reporting purposes, refused is interchangeable with ‘unsuccessful’.

Management information is collected at local authority level as funding is distributed to local authorities, and is not broken down by parliamentary constituency.