Guidance

Homelessness Prevention Grant 2022 to 2023 exceptional winter top-up allocations: technical note

Updated 4 December 2022

Applies to England

1. Homelessness Prevention Grant

The £310 million Homelessness Prevention Grant in 2022-23 combined and uplifted what was previously the Flexible Homelessness Support Grant and Homelessness Reduction Grant. For the second half of 2022-23 we have uplifted this funding stream by £50 million.

This document provides a technical description of how we calculated the allocations for the £50 million uplift for the Homelessness Prevention Grant. We consider the allocations for the uplift in two stages. The first stage considers the allocation of the £263 million which reflects the value of grants awarded in 2020-21. The second stage considers the allocation of the £47 million additional funding made available in 2021-22.

To allocate the £50 million uplift, we have replicated the two-stage process set out in the ‘Allocation of Homelessness Prevention Grant 2021-22: technical note’ to calculate the relative share allocated to each individual authority, and rescaled the funding allocated to individual local authorities based on the quantum of the £50 million uplift.

Allocations for West Northamptonshire and North Northamptonshire are calculated as the sum of what would have been allocated for their constituent parts (West Northamptonshire = Daventry District, Northampton, and South Northants; North Northamptonshire = Wellingborough, Kettering, Corby, and East Northants).

2. Replicating the process: Initial £263 million

The first £263 million is allocated in the same way as the combined FHSG and HRG allocations in 2020/21.

Missing data

For the newly formed councils, the allocations are the sum of the local authorities merged to form the councils^{[footnote 1]}.

3. Replicating the process: £47 million top-up

First 80%

The first 80% of the £47 million funding uplift is allocated to reflect relative homelessness pressures. We derive a relative estimate of pressures using the following elements:

• A: The number of housing benefit claimants at December 2019. We expect this to reflect the relative number of households becoming homeless. This is the sum of private and social rented sector housing benefit claimants and households on universal credit with a housing entitlement in the private and social rented sector. This information can be found on DWP stat xPlore.
• B: lower quartile monthly private rented sector rents for two-bedroom properties 2019/20. This reflects the relative costs of prevention in terms of securing accommodation for homeless households. This is available from table 2.4.
• C: area cost adjustment, as used in allocating COVID-19 related funding to lower-tier authorities. This reflects the relative costs of prevention in terms of staff time. More detail is available at annex B of the Technical note on allocation of October COVID-19 local government finance package. See data on Coronavirus (COVID-19): emergency funding for local government in 2020 to 2021 and additional support in 2021 to 2022.

The relative pressure is calculated using the following formula:

The allocation share for each local authority (i) is derived as the proportion of the total pressure in each local authority:

Pressure = A * (B + C * 8 hours * £15 per hour)

The allocation share for each local authority (i) is derived as the proportion of the total pressure in each local authority:

Missing data

Variable A

We do not have a total number of housing benefit claimants for newly formed councils. We estimate the total using the values for the local authorities merged to form the councils^{[footnote 2]}.

Variable B

We do not have rent data for the following local authorities: Buckinghamshire Council; North Northamptonshire; West Northamptonshire; Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole; West Suffolk; Somerset West and Taunton; East Suffolk; Dorset.

We estimate rents in these local authorities using a weighted average of rents across the local authorities that merged to create them^{[footnote 3]}. For these areas the weights are based on the total number of homelessness prevention and relief duties owed in 2018/19. See data on the Homelessness live tables.

Variable C

We do not have data on an area cost adjustment for Isles of Scilly. We use the area cost adjustment for Cornwall as a proxy.

Final 20%

The remaining 20% of the £50 million funding is allocated based on single homelessness pressures. This is calculated as the total single adult households owed a prevention or a relief duty in 2019/20.

See data on the Homelessness live tables.

Shares are calculated as the proportion of all single adult households owed a duty in each authority.

Missing data

Where there is missing data in the published tables, we estimate local authority shares using the share of the first 80%, but reduce this share by 25% to ensure that local authorities do not gain (relative to 75% of local authorities) as a result of missing data. We then rescale all shares to ensure the total across all local authorities adds to 100%.

4. Rescaling to £50 million uplift

The two-stage process outlined above provides relative shares for each individual local authority of the £310 million Homelessness Prevention Grant allocated in 2021-22. To calculate the funding allocations for each local authority of the £50 million uplift, we use the local authority shares estimated for the £310 million and rescale based on the quantum of the £50 million uplift (multiplying the relative share by 50/310).

This ensures that local authority allocations reflect the range of relative homelessness pressures outlined in previous technical notes: Homelessness Prevention Grant 2022 to 2023 technical note and Homelessness Prevention Grant 2021 to 2022

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1. Buckinghamshire = Aylesbury, Chiltern, Wycombe and South Bucks; North Northamptonshire = Corby, East Northants, Kettering, Wellingborough; West Northamptonshire = Daventry, Northampton, South Northants ↩

2. Buckinghamshire = Aylesbury, Chiltern, Wycombe and South Bucks; North Northamptonshire = Corby, East Northants, Kettering, Wellingborough; West Northamptonshire = Daventry, Northampton, South Northants ↩

3. Buckinghamshire = Aylesbury, Chiltern, Wycombe and South Bucks; North Northamptonshire = Corby, East Northants, Kettering, Wellingborough; West Northamptonshire = Daventry, Northampton, South Northants; Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole = Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole; West Suffolk = Forest Heath and St Edmundsbury; Somerset West and Taunton = Somerset West and Taunton; East Suffolk = Suffolk Coastal and Waveney; Dorset = East Dorset, North Dorset, Purbeck, West Dorset and Weymouth and Portland ↩