Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what progress his Department has made on developing the universal credit landlord portal; and what the roll-out schedule is for releasing that portal.

Following successful pilots of the ‘Trusted Partner’ scheme and the ‘Landlord Portal Service’, DWP will rollout both initiatives together.

The Trusted Partner scheme allows social landlords to play a key role in engaging with their tenants who are Universal Credit claimants, helping those who can’t manage their housing payments to access the support available. The Landlord Portal provides social landlords with the ability to submit information directly to the Universal Credit online system, which supports timely and accurate payment of housing costs to Universal Credit claimants.

The next stage of rollout for both initiatives means that all Trusted Partner landlords will have access to the Landlord Portal. We have already introduced this to the landlords involved in our Trusted Partner pilot. In the coming months, we will invite more social landlords in Universal Credit Full Service areas to enroll in the Landlord Portal, becoming Trusted Partners. The independent evaluation report of Trusted Partner will be published shortly.