Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, pursuant to the Answer of 3 July 2015 to Question 4699, on housing benefit, what estimate he has made of the cost of providing the information requested in that Question.

The information requested on the number of households who are no longer subject to the benefit cap and are still in receipt of Housing Benefit is not recorded on the dataset available for analysis and therefore is not available.

Information on the individual benefits received by households that has flowed off the benefit cap is recorded on the Department’s administrative data. However, this information is not readily available and to provide an answer would require additional processing and quality assurance, which would incur disproportionate costs, estimated at more than 5 days work and will therefore be in excess of £850.