Official Statistics

Background information and methodology: use of Discretionary Housing Payments statistics

Published 12 December 2024

Applies to England and Wales

1. Introduction  

These Official Statistics are published biannually and give a summary of local authority (LA) expenditure on Discretionary Housing Payments (DHPs). These statistics have not been assessed by the UK Statistics Authority and have not been designated as National Statistics.  

For accounting purposes, LAs are legally required to provide details of their DHP expenditure at the midpoint and end of the financial year. LAs are also asked for voluntary ‘monitoring’ information to provide further details about their use of DHP funding.   

Since the financial year ending March 2021, LAs complete a combined return, which asks for both the legally required financial information and the voluntary monitoring information on the same return. This statistical release presents a summary of these returns. It covers the first half of the financial year ending March 2025. 

Previous releases of this series are provided on the Discretionary Housing Payments collection page. 

2. Methodology 

The financial information details how much of the government contribution towards DHPs LAs have spent for the first half of the financial year (including any additional expenditure above the government contribution). The analysis of this data focuses on comparing total spend against central government allocations. 

Any comparison of expenditure across years should be treated with caution as the government contribution to DHPs differs year to year. Funding has been unchanged for LAs since 2022 to 2023.  

By 18 November 2024, 311 out of 318 LAs had submitted a return approved by the LAs’ Responsible Finance Officer. All of these returns included an estimate of DHP expenditure. The Department is contacting the remaining LAs in order to obtain information about expenditure.  

These statistics are also based on monitoring information, which gives further details of LAs expenditure on DHPs by splitting the spend by the purpose for which the DHP was awarded and the welfare reform (if any) with which it was associated. 

Because the monitoring information is voluntary, not all LAs provide it, and some LAs do not supply all the information requested. This means that some LAs may provide a split by welfare reform, but not by the purpose of the DHP. 

Of the 311 LAs that submitted returns by 18 November 2024, 291 provided a breakdown of expenditure by welfare reform whilst 285 provided a breakdown of expenditure by the purpose of the DHP. 

When we gather returns, we perform various checks to assess whether they are accurate. For example, we check against the previous year’s figures. We also check any results that look too big or too small. We then query any results that appear to be inaccurate with the LA. 

That said, the statistics rely on the accuracy of the returns. Although we believe they give an accurate overall picture, it is likely that smaller errors remain even after the quality checks above. 

When LAs provide data on the number of awards, there may be some differences between LAs in the way awards are counted. For example, if the amount of a DHP award changed, some LAs may count this as a new DHP award, whereas some may count it as the same award. We do query awards figures with LAs that are inconsistent with other data they provide, but caution should be taken when comparing the number of awards reported by individual LAs. 

3. Trustworthiness and Quality  

As described above, this publication is based on information provided by LAs. While some quality checks are conducted, the results are not verified in detail. 

Any discrepancies were queried with LAs and any resubmissions of corrected returns received by 18 November 2024 were accepted and included in the analysis. No results were altered without the explicit consent of the submitting LA.  

4. Definitions

4.1. Removal of the Spare Room Subsidy (RSRS)  

In April 2013 the RSRS policy came into effect. This policy applies to working age social rented sector Housing Benefit and Universal Credit claimants (pensioner households are exempt). Where claimants have more bedrooms than their bedroom entitlement, as defined by the social sector size criteria, they are subject to a reduction in the eligible rent used to assess their housing benefit.  

4.2. Benefit Cap  

Rolled out from April 2013, the Benefit Cap is a limit on the total amount of benefit that most working age households can receive. Since April 2023, the maximum amount couples and households with children can receive is £22,020 a year (£25,323 in Greater London) and £14,753 a year (£16,967 in Greater London) for single person households. 

4.3. Local Housing Allowance (LHA) Reforms  

Tenants who rent from a private landlord and receive housing benefit or Universal Credit Housing Allowance generally have their claim assessed under the LHA rules. These determine the maximum amount payable in a given area depending on the household characteristics of the claimant. LHA rates were originally set at 50th percentile of local market rents, then reduced to 30th percentile in 2011 by welfare reforms. Since 2013, the rates have been uprated inconsistently or frozen; in some years there was additional funding for some areas (Targeted Affordability Fund). LHA rates were last increased to the 30th percentile in April 2024.

6. Useful links  

This document, the statistics release and supporting tables can be found here:   

Information on Official Statistics is available via the UK Statistics Authority website 

Information about statistics at DWP is available via the Department’s website 

7. Contact information 

Media enquiries:  

For media enquiries please contact the DWP press office 

Responsible Analyst: Keir Thomson 

Email: [email protected] 

Author: Chloe Lorimer  

Email: [email protected]