Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many people applied for short term benefit advance in (a) 2014 and (b) 2014-15; and how many such applications were successful.

The total number of Short Term Benefit Advance applications received for:

a) January 2014 to December 2014 was 253,437. Of those 76,173 were successful.

b) the financial year April 2014 to February 2015 was 221,824. Of those 72,599 were sucessful.

Notes

1. Only Employment and Support Allowance, Incapacity Benefit, Jobseekers Allowance and Income Support applications are included in the above information.

2. A full set of data isn’t yet available for April 2014 to March 2015.

3. Data for applications is sourced from clerical records via the Management Information System Programme (MISP) and awards sourced from the Benefit Expenditure Business Information system.