Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, pursuant to the Answer of 6 January 2025 to Question 21111 on Local Housing Allowance, if she will publish the analysis of the range of factors considered in the decision not to increase local housing allowance rates.

The impacts referenced in the previous answer were determined using a wide variety of metrics, data and analysis. These included:

• Current and past rental data supplied by the Valuation Office Agency, Rent Officers Scotland, and Rent Officers Wales;
• Analysis of current and past DWP administrative data on recipient households, including the modelling of the effects of potential policy changes: and
• Forecasts of benefit caseloads and related matters.

At Autumn Budget the Government prioritised a downpayment on poverty, by introducing a Fair Payment Rate for Universal Credit (UC) customers with deductions to retain more of their benefit award. We also invested £1bn in extending the Household Support Fund and maintaining Discretionary Housing Payments (DHPs) at current levels (including Barnett impacts) for 2025/26. Additionally, from 1 April 2026, we are introducing a new Crisis and Resilience Fund, incorporating Discretionary Housing Payments and funding to ensure the poorest children do not go hungry outside of term time. This will provide £842 million per year (£1 billion including Barnett consequential) to reform how crisis support is delivered locally.

This support can be paid to those entitled to Housing Benefit or Universal Credit who face a shortfall in meeting their housing costs.

DWP forecast data is regularly published and can be found in our benefit expenditure tables: Benefit expenditure and caseload tables - GOV.UK

The Rent Officers Order 2025 Explanatory Memorandum includes considerations for reviewing LHA rates for 2025/26:
The Rent Officers (Housing Benefit and Universal Credit Functions) (Modification) Order 2025

In addition, the department regularly publishes Universal Credit and Housing Benefit data via Official Statistics. The data can be obtained via Stat-Xplore:

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