Housing Benefit: Cost of Living

(asked on 9th November 2022) - View Source

Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, pursuant to the Answer of 10 October 2022 to Question 59849 Housing Benefit: Cost of Living, for what reasons his Department stated that spare room subsidy strengthens work incentives.


Answered by
Mims Davies Portrait
Mims Davies
Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Work and Pensions)
This question was answered on 21st November 2022

The removal of the spare room subsidy policy provides fairness for hard-working taxpaying households and encourages people to move into work, where possible. This aligns with the Governments long-term focus of continuing to support people into, and to progress in work.

This measure ensures that benefit claimants (in the same way as for those not claiming benefits) are expected to make choices about affordability and how they will fund the rent shortfall for property that is deemed larger than they need.

We recognise there may be circumstances where claimants need an additional room beyond the bedrooms allocated under the policy. For situations like this where claimants need further financial help with their housing costs, we provide funding to local authorities in the form of Discretionary Housing Payments (DHPs). Since 2011, the Government has provided almost £1.5 billion in Discretionary Housing Payments to local authorities. This is alongside the £421 million Household Support Fund which has been extended from 1 October 2022 to 31 March 2023.

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