Official Statistics

Use of Discretionary Housing Payments: April to September 2021

Analysis of local authorities' use of Discretionary Housing Payments (England and Wales) from April to September 2021, based on local authority mid-year returns.

Applies to England and Wales

Documents

Data tables: use of Discretionary Housing Payments, England and Wales April to September 2021

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Details

The latest release of these statistics can be found in the collection of Discretionary Housing Payments statistics.

This publication provides analysis of the use of Discretionary Housing Payments (DHPs).

DHPs are monetary awards that can be made by Local Authorities to people experiencing financial difficulty with housing costs who qualify for Housing Benefit or the housing costs element of Universal Credit.

This statistical release presents analysis of information submitted to the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) by Local Authorities, covering the first half of the financial year ending March 2022. Local Authorities provide details of their use of DHP funds to DWP for these statistics twice a year. These are published for the first 6 months of the financial year and for the whole of the financial year.

DHPs and Scotland

DHPs for Scotland were devolved from 1 April 2017, under the Scotland Act 2016 implementing the Smith Commission Agreement.

Notices

Users are advised of the following changes from this release:

  • we have included a financial information table, as we do in the end-of-year publication
  • the removal of the data table which compares the DHP expenditure associated with each welfare reform to the funding allocated in relation to each welfare reform

More information about this is in the background information and methodology document.

Feedback

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We welcome all feedback on the content, relevance, accessibility and timing of these statistics to help us in producing statistics that meet user needs.

For non-media enquiries on these statistics email: dhp.returns@dwp.gov.uk

For media enquiries, please contact the DWP press office.

Next releases

Use of Discretionary Housing Payments statistics are published twice a year. The dates for future releases are listed in the DWP statistics release calendar.

Pre-release access

In addition to staff who are responsible for the production and quality assurance of the statistics, up to 24-hour pre-release access is provided to ministers and other officials. We publish the job titles and organisations of the people who have been granted up to 24-hour pre-release access to the Discretionary Housing Payments statistics.

Updates to this page

Published 16 December 2021

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