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 4592, on social security benefits, what estimate he has made of the cost of providing the information requested in that Question.

The information requested on households affected by the benefit cap since April 2013 whilst living in temporary accommodation in which they have been placed by a local authority is not recorded on the Department’s analytical dataset and therefore is not available for analysis.

Information on households subject to the benefit cap that are living in temporary accommodation is recorded on the Department’s administrative data. However, this information is grouped with other housing types in the analytical dataset used for the routine publication of benefit cap statistics, and therefore, is not readily available. 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.