Housing Benefit – Parliamentary Written Answer

Stephen Timms: To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions whether he plans to take account of rent affordability in areas in determining which areas to exempt from the cap of one per cent on the uprating of local housing allowance.

Steve Webb: The Government has set aside £140 million over two years to help people most affected by the 1% cap on local housing allowance uprating in 2014-15 and 2015-16.  Our intention is that this funding will be used to increase the local housing allowance rates in areas where rent increases are causing a shortage of affordable accommodation. We do not know yet which areas will see the largest problems with affordability but will consider the available evidence, including rental data collected by the rent officer to decide how it is targeted.  We are currently considering the detailed policy design and will make further information available in due course.

                                           

Stephen Timms: To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions whether he plans to (a) review the effect of changes to the uprating methodology and (b) re-baseline local housing allowance rates in 2015-16.

Steve Webb: Rent officers will publish annually both the new local housing allowance (LHA) rates and the 30th percentile of market rents so a comparison between the two can be made. This will provide transparency to the public and Parliament, enabling the monitoring of any divergences in each broad rental market area, allowing the Government to make flexible decisions about the impacts of the policy as the information becomes available.  The Government is committed to making savings from this measure until 2015-16. Subsequently it has the opportunity to reconsider the policy design, in light of the relationship between LHA rates and local rents.